£,  . 


Of  this  book  there  have  been  printed  from 
type  in  the  month  of  August,  nineteen 
hundred  and  eleven,  nine  hundred  and  fifty 
copies  on  specially  made  paper  and  fifty 
copies  on  "Old  Stratford''  paper. 


Cter 


attlje 
2,0100  Club  ^ 


CitJerfctn  ^  Chester  & 


Cfjatles  ^.  $rice 


i^etu  got*:  ptinteft  fot;  t^e  !Loto0  Club 


Jiomrnt 


mcm^t 


SPEECHES  AT  THE 
LOTOS  CLUB 


ARRANGED   BY 

JOHN  ELDERKIN        CHESTER  S.  LORD 
CHARLES  W.  PRICE 


5n  t&e  Uept&s  of  t&e  lotos 
t&ere  10  tttttj)*" 

ORIENTAL  PROVERB. 


NEW  YORK 

PRINTED  FOR  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 
MCMXI 


Copyright,  1911,  by 
THE  LOTOS  CLUB 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE,  President  of  the  Club        .        .          1 

At  the  last  Yule-tide  dinner  in  the  house  556,  558  Fifth  Avenue, 
January  9,  1909 

THEODORE  ROOSEVELT 9 

At  the  dinner  to  Benjamin  B.  Odell,  Jr.,  March  23,  1901 

SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 12 

At  the  dinner  to  Benjamin  B.  Odell,  Jr.,  March  23,  1901 

WILLIAM  HENRY  WHITE,  Vice-President  of  the  Club        16 

At  the  dinner  to  Joseph  H.  Choate,  November  16,  1901 

JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 18 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  November  16,  1901 

ANDREW  CARNEGIE 26 

At  the  dinner  to  Joseph  H.  Choate,  November  16,  1901 

THOMAS  B.  REED 31 

At  the  dinner  to  Joseph  H.  Choate,  November  16,  1901 

SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS  •  .        .        .        .        .        .        35 

At  the  dinner  to  Joseph  H.  Choate,  November  16,  1901 

EDWARD  PATTERSON .  39 

At  the  dinner  to  Joseph  H.  Choate,  November  16,  1901 

MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN      .        .....        .        .        .        43 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  December  21,  1901 

THOMAS  R.  SLICER 48 

At  the  dinner  to  Morgan  J.  O'Brien,  December  21,  1901 
V 


M181913 


vi  CONTENTS 

PAGK 

DAVID  B.  HILL 53 

At  the  dinner  to  Morgan  J.  O'Brien,  December  21,  1901 

FREDERICK  FUNSTON 56 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  March  8,  1902 

MINOT  J.  SAVAGE 81 

At  the  dinner  to  Frederick  Funston,  March  8,  1902 

CHARLES  S.  GLEED 87 

At  the  dinner  to  Frederick  Funston,  March  8,  1902 

JOSEPH  B.  COGHLAN 91 

At  the  dinner  to  Frederick  Funston,  March  8,  1902 

HORACE  PORTER  93 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  June  17,  1902 

SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS     .        % 99 

At  the  dinner  to  Horace  Porter,  June  17,  1902 

CHOWFA  MAHA  VAJIRAVUDH,  Crown  Prince  of  Siam  .       108 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  October  25,  1902 

PRINCE  CHOWFA  CHAKRABONGSE  OF  SIAM    .        .        .      110 

At  the  dinner  to  the  Crown  Prince  of  Siam,  October  25,  1902 

FELIX  ADLER         .        .        .        .        .        .        .        •      112 

At  the  dinner  to  the  Crown  Prince  of  Siam,  October  25,  1902 

HENRY  D.  ESTABROOK 115 

At  the  dinner  to  the  Crown  Prince  of  Siam,  October  25,  1902 

JOSEPH  I.  C.  CLARKE    .......      119 

At  the  supper  to  Edward  H.  Sothern,  February  21,  1903 

ELIHU  ROOT          ......        .        .      123 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  May  9,  1903 

SIMEON  FORD 131 

At  the  dinner  to  Elihu  Root,  May  9,  1903 

JOSEPH  C.  HENDRIX 135 

At  the  dinner  to  Elihu  Root,  May  9,  1903 


CONTENTS  vii 

PAGE 

SIR  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG 140 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  November  28,  1903 

THOMAS  R.  SLICER 144 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Chentung  Liang  Chang,  November  28,  1903 

STEWART  L.  WOODFORD 150 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Chentung  Liang  Chang,  November  28,  1903 

JOSEPH  WHEELER 153 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Chentung  Liang  Chang,  November  28,  1903 

SIR  HENRY  MORTIMER  DURAND     >        .        .        ,        -      155 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  January  20,  1904 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE       -.  •       .        .        .        .        .        .      160 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Henry  Mortimer  Durand,  January  20,  1904 

WAYNE  MCVEAGH 164 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Henry  Mortimer  Durand,  January  20,  1904 

E.  FRANCIS  HYDE 167 

At  the  dinner  to  Richard  Strauss,  March  19,  1904 

SIMEON  FORD 170 

At  the  dinner  to  George  B.  McClellan,  March  25,  1904 


WILLIAM  H.  MCELROY 174 

At  the  dinner  to  George  B.  McClellan,  March  25,  1904 

JOHN  MORLEY 177 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  November  25,  1904 

NICHOLAS  MURRAY  BUTLER  ,        .        ,        .  '      ,      183 

At  the  dinner  to  John  Morley,  November  25,  1904 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE ,     .    .      188 

At  the  dinner  to  John  Morley,  November  25,  1904 

CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 193 

At  the  dinner  to  John  Morley,  November  25,  1904 


viii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

LYMAN  ABBOTT 197 

At  the  dinner  to  John  Morley,  November  25,  1904 

FELIX  ABLER 201 

At  the  dinner  to  John  Morley,  November  25,  1904 

HENRY  VAN  DYKE 207 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  December  23,  1904 

MINOT  J.  SAVAGE 214 

At  the  dinner  to  Henry  Van  Dyke,  December  23,  1904 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER 219 

At  the  dinner  to  Henry  Van  Dyke,  December  23,  1904 

GEORGE  HARVEY 223 

At  the  dinner  to  Henry  Van  Dyke,  December  23,  1904 

IRVING  BACHELLER         .        .        .        ...        .      225 

At  the  dinner  to  Henry  Van  Dyke,  December  23,  1904 

HAMILTON  W.  MABIE .231 

At  the  dinner  to  Henry  Van  Dyke,  December  23,  1904 

SIR  CASPAR  PURDON  CLARKE         .        .        .        .        .      239 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  February  23,  1905 

FREDERICK  DIELMAN      .        .        .        .  .  242 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Caspar  Purdon  Clarke,  February  23,  1905 

WILLIAM  T.  EVANS 245 

At  the  dinner  to  Sir  Caspar  Purdon  Clarke,  February  23,  1905 

WHITELAW  REID 249 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  May  18,  1905 

EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN 256 

At  the  dinner  to  Whitelaw  Reid,  May  18,  1905 

ERNEST  M.  STIRES 260 

At  the  dinner  to  Whitelaw  Reid,  May  18,  1905 

CLARK  HOWELL 263 

At  the  dinner  to  Whitelaw  Reid,  May  18,  1905 


CONTENTS  ix 

PAGE 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE 266 

At  the  dinner  to  Joseph  H.  Choate,  October  21,  1905 

JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 269 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  October  21,  1905 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE .      278 

At  the  dinner  to  Horace  Porter,  November  18,  1905 

HORACE  PORTER 280 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  November  18,  1905 

SETH  Low .      287 

At  the  dinner  to  Horace  Porter,  November  18,  1905 

WOODROW  WILSON        .        .        .        ...        .        .      292 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  February  3,  1906 

ANDREW  V.  V.  RAYMOND       ......      302 

At  the  dinner  to  Woodrow  Wilson,  February  3,  1906 

GEORGE  HARVEY  309 

At  the  dinner  to  Woodrow  Wilson,  February  3,  1906 

ST.  CLAIR  MCKELWAY 313 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  December  15,  1906 

HORACE  PORTER    • 318 

At  the  dinner  to  St.  Clair  McKelway,  December  15,  1906 

ROBERT  E.  PEARY 326 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  February  2,  1907 

ARTHUR  T.  HADLEY 335 

At  the  dinner  to  Robert  E.  Peary,  February  2,  1907 

ROBLEY  D.  EVANS          .        .        .        .        ,        .        .      337 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  November  2,  1907 

HENRY  C.  POTTER 341 

At  the  dinner  to  Rear- Admiral  Evans,  November  2,  1907 

SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 344 

*  At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  January  11,  1908 


x  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

ANDREW  CARNEGIE 356 

At  the  dinner  to  Samuel  L.  Clemens,  January  11,  1908 

ROBERT  STUART  MACARTHUR 360 

At  the  dinner  to  Samuel  L.  Clemens,  January  11,  1908 

Wu  TING  FANG 364 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  May  6,  1908 

JAMES  WHITFIELD  BASHFORD 366 

At  the  dinner  to  Wu  Ting  Fang,  May  6,  1908 

STEPHEN  S.  WISE 371 

At  the  dinner  to  Wu  Ting  Fang,  May   6,  1908 

BARON  KOGORO  TAKAHIRA     .        .        .'  .        .      375 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  December  19,  1908 

MELVILLE  E.  STONE      .        .        .  .        .        .      378 

At  the  dinner  to  Baron  Kogoro  Takahira,  December  19,  1908 

JOHN  S.  WISE 382 

At  the  dinner  to  Baron  Kogoro  Takahira,  December  19,  1908 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE 384 

At  the  dinner  to  Charles  E.  Hughes,  January  30,  1909 

CHARLES  E.  HUGHES     . 387 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  January  30,  1909 

MAHLON  PITNEY 398 

At  the  dinner  to  Charles  E.  Hughes,  January  30,  1909 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE 402 

"Last  words  in  the  old  house,"  January  30,  1909 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE 403 

At  the  dinner  to  Andrew  Carnegie,  March  17,  1909 

ANDREW  CARNEGIE 406 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  March  17,  1909 


CONTENTS  xi 

PAGE 

ST.  CLAIR  MCKELWAY 410 

At  the  dinner  to  Andrew  Carnegie,  March  17,  1909 

RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER 413 

At  the  dinner  to  Andrew  Carnegie,  March  17,  1909 

SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 415 

At  the  dinner  to  Andrew  Carnegie,  March  17,  1909 

HENRY  S.  PRITCHETT 419 

At  the  dinner  to  Andrew  Carnegie,  March  17,  1909 

ROBERT  STUART  MACARTHUR 423 

At  the  dinner  to  Andrew  Carnegie,  March  17,  1909 

JOHNSTON  FORBES-ROBERTSON       .        .        .        .        .      427 

At  the  supper  in  his  honor,  April  2,  1910 

WILLIAM  WINTER 432 

At  the  supper  to  J.  Forbes-Robertson,  April  2,  1910 

LAURENCE  IRVING 439 

At  the  supper  to  J.  Forbes-Robertson,  April  2,  1910 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE 441 

At  the  dinner  to  Charles  E.  Hughes,  November  19,  1910 

CHARLES  E.  HUGHES 444 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  November  19,  1910 

DAVID  H.  GREER 450 

At  the  dinner  to  Charles  E.  Hughes,  November  19,  1910 

GEORGE  W.  WICKERSHAM 453 

At  the  dinner  to  Charles  E.  Hughes,  November  19,  1910 

MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN      .        .        .        .        .        .        .      456 

At  the  dinner  to  Charles  E.  Hughes,  November  19,  1910 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE    .        .        .  .        .        .      465 

At  the  dinner  to  Jules  J.  Jusserand,  December  2,  1910 


xii  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

JULES  J.  JUSSERAND 468 

At  the  dinner  in  his  honor,  December  2,  1910 

HAMILTON  W.  MABIE 474 

At  the  dinner  to  Jules  J.  Jusserand,  December  2,  1910 

CHARLEMAGNE  TOWER 479 

At  the  dinner  to  Jules  J.  Jusserand,  December  2,  1910 

CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 483 

At  the  dinner  to  Jules  J.  Jusserand,  December  2,  1910 


LIST  OF  PLATES 

FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

MENU  OF  THE  YULE-TIDE  FEAST,  1910 1 

JOHN  ELDERKIN 2 

CHARLES  W.  PRICE 56 

MENU  OF  THE  DINNER  TO  RICHARD  STRAUSS,  1904  .    .     .  167 

WILLIAM  T.  EVANS 245 

MENU  OF  THE  DINNER  TO  SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS,  1908      .  344 

MENU  OF  THE  DINNER  TO  ANDREW  CARNEGIE,  1909  .     .  406 

MENU  OF  SUPPER  TO  J.FORBES-ROBERTSON,  1910  .     .    .  427 

YULE-TIDE  FEAST,  1911 465 


INTEODUCTION 

THE  previous  volume  of  "Speeches  at  the  Lotos 
Club,"  published  just  ten  years  ago,  contained 
a  few  speeches  delivered  in  the  early  days  of  the 
Lotos,  including  those  of  Charles  Kingsley,  James  An 
thony  Froude,  and  Wilkie  Collins,  in  the  first  house  at 
No.  2  Irving  Place,  but  mainly  speeches  of  later  date, 
when  the  custom  of  stenographically  preserving  them 
had  become  general.  Some  of  those  published  were  de 
livered  in  the  second  house,  147  Fifth  Avenue,  and  the 
others  in  the  club's  third  home,  556  Fifth  Avenue. 
That  volume  ended  with  the  beginning  of  1901. 

The  period  covered  by  the  present  volume,  from 
1901  to  the  end  of  1910,  was  one  of  great  prosperity  for 
the  club,  during  which  its  traditions  were  well  main 
tained.  The  long  procession  of  interesting  men  and 
events  moved  across  its  stage  unceasingly,  and  no  single 
year  passed  without  notable  gatherings  under  its  roof, 
at  which  homage  was  paid  to  genius  or  achievement, 
and  often  '  *  the  fun  flew  fast  and  furious. ' ' 

The  presidency  of  Mr.  Lawrence  continued  through 
out  this  period,  and  has  now  entered  its  twenty-third 
year,  covering,  with  that  of  his  distinguished  predeces 
sor,  Whitelaw  Reid,  ever  beloved  in  the  club,  some 
thirty-seven  years  of  the  club's  forty-one  years  of  ex 
istence. 


XV 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

In  lieu  of  other  introduction,  the  compilers  print,  out 
of  its  order,  at  the  beginning  of  the  book,  the  address  of 
President  Lawrence  at  one  of  the  unique  and  delightful 
Yule-tide  dinners,  the  last  in  the  house  recently  va 
cated,  believing  that  that  address  adequately  portrays 
our  gatherings  and  appropriately  ushers  in  the  good 
things  which  follow. 

Like  its  predecessor,  the  present  volume  contains  but 
a  few  of  many  speeches,  all  well  worthy  to  be  preserved. 

The  chief  embarrassment  of  the  compilers  has  been 
an  embarrassment  of  riches. 

August,  1911. 


SPEECHES  AT  THE 
LOTOS  CLUB 


"Dr.  Johnson  once  described  a  club  as  'A  company 
of  good  fellows  meeting  regularly  under  certain 
conditions.'  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  Johnson 
would  have  liked  the  Lotos  Club.  He  liked  the  fra 
grance  of  the  bowl  and  the  generous  trencher  dish; 
and  he  liked  to  sit  up  late  at  night,  as  I  understand 
some  of  you  do  down  here.  There  is  a  tradition  that 
on  a  certain  occasion  he  celebrated  the  success  of  a 
young  woman  poet  by  inviting  her  to  a  company, 
and  they  sat  up  all  night;  and  in  order  to  give 
distinction  to  the  feast  he  had  a  large  fresh  apple- 
pie  made  which  was  crowned  with  bay.  Boswell 
records  that  as  the  hours  wore  away,  Dr.  Johnson's 
face  became  rosier  and  rosier  until  the  dawn.  Now 
we  find  here  to-night  the  bay  and  the  laurel;  we  have 
the  mountain  pine  for  purity,  and  the  Scotch 
heather  for  the  sweep  of  the  sky;  we  have  the 
balsam  for  the  fragrance  and  the  warmth  of  friend 
ship,  and  we  have  the  blue  flower  for  the  eternal 
search  of  the  poet,  and  those  who  have  the  poet's 
soul  for  the  ideal. ' ' 

—Hamilton  W.  Mabie,  at  the  dinner  to  Henry  Van  Dyke, 
December  23,  1904. 


FEANK  E.  LAWEENCE 

(PRESIDENT  OF  THE  CLUB) 

AT  THE  LAST  YULE-TIDE  DINNER  IN  THE  HOUSE 
556,  558  FIFTH  AVENUE,  JANUAEY  9,  1909 

THE  feast  was  opened  in  customary  form,  by  passing  the 
wassail-bowl,  a  huge  silver  loving-cup  dating  from  1870, 
and  augmented  by  one  of  lesser  size,  made  from  an  Ameri 
can  shell  taken  by  Henry  N.  Gary,  a  member  of  the  club, 
from  one  of  the  wrecked  Spanish  battle-ships  the  day 
after  the  battle  at  Santiago. 

The  carols  were  sung,  beginning  with  the  ancient  melody 
"God  Rest  You,  Merrie  Gentlemen";  the  pipers  passed  in 
procession  about  the  rooms,  preceding  the  great  baron  of 
beef,  which  was  borne  upon  the  shoulders  of  four  men, 
and  followed  by  the  cooks,  and  when  "The  Roast  Beef  of 
Old  England"  had  been  sung,  the  viands  eaten,  the  punch, 
brewed  by  mystic  light,  circulated,  and  the  coffee  placed 
upon  the  tables,  President  Frank  R.  Lawrence  arose  and 
spoke  as  follows : 

THE  ruthless  hand  of  improvement  will  soon  be  laid 
upon  this  spot,  and  this  house,  where  for  the  past 
sixteen  years  you  have  kept  alive  the  fires  of  good  fel 
lowship,  will  know  only  "the  dust  and  ashes  of  achieve 
ment." 

At  such  a  time  as  this  it  is  natural  to  dwell  upon  the 
past,  and  to  express  a  hope  for  the  future. 

1 


2'  'SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

I  promise  you  that  I  am  not  going  to  weary  you  by 
speaking  at  length.  You  are  here  to  enjoy  yourselves, 
and  you  would  rather  listen  to  the  musicians  than  listen 
to  me. 

Yes,  even  though,  like  the  friars  in  Heine's  poem, 
they  were 

Singing  sinful  songs  in  a  sorrowful  tone, 

you  would  rather  listen  to  the  musicians  than  listen 
to  me. 

But  I  think  you  will  bear  with  me  a  moment,  for  I 
may  claim  to  be  a  veteran  of  the  club,  having  been  a 
member  here,  not  so  long  as  John  Elderkin,  or  White- 
law  Reid,  or  Chauncey  M.  Depew,  or  Samuel  L.  Clem 
ens;  still  for  more  than  thirty  years  I  have  been  a 
member  of  this  club,  and  for  twenty  years  your  kind 
ness  has  retained  me  as  your  president. 

This  seems  to  be  an  office  from  whose  term  there  is 
no  deduction  for  either  good  or  ill  conduct.  My  illus 
trious  predecessor  served  you  for  fourteen  years,  and 
escaped  only  by  accepting  a  foreign  mission,  which 
compelled  him  to  leave  the  country. 

"When  I  entered  the  club,  John  Brougham  was  its 
president,  and  William  J.  Florence,  John  McCullough, 
Lawrence  Barrett,  and  sometimes  Edwin  Booth  were 
among  its  active  members.  Depew  was  a  popular 
speaker,  practising  the  art  of  oratory  on  all  occasions. 
Clemens  had  already  set  the  world  in  the  roars  of 
laughter  in  which  he  has  ever  since  kept  it,  and  Reid 
was  a  brilliant  journalist,  still  sometimes  having  to 
bear  the  taunt  of  being  a  young  man. 

The  house  in  Irving  Place  was  before  my  member- 


FRANK  E.  LAWRENCE  3 

ship.  But  the  house  at  Fifth  Avenue  and  Twenty-first 
Street,  the  Bradish  Johnson  mansion,  which  we  now 
call  the  old  house,  as  you  will  soon  be  calling  this  the 
old  house,  is,  to  the  men  of  my  time,  rich  with  memories 
of  the  past,  and  the  dinners  in  that  house,  where  only 
one  hundred  and  eight  members  in  all  could  be  seated 
at  the  tables,  appeared  like  Lucullan  banquets,  never  to 
be  outdone ! 

There  have  been  many  delightful  moments  in  this 
club. 

Some  of  you  will  remember  the  night  when  Cyrus  W. 
Field  brought  in  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  who  filled  the 
rooms  with  anecdotes  and  memories  of  Longfellow  and 
Hawthorne  and  Emerson  and  Lowell,  until  we  seemed, 
in  fancy,  in  the  midst  of  the  most  brilliant  group  of 
literary  men  known  in  American  history. 

But  that  was  in  the  old  house. 

In  that  house  we  entertained  General  Grant,  and  I 
knew  Bayard  Taylor  and  Henry  M.  Stanley. 

Stanley  was  called  from  your  table  while  on  his  feet, 
speaking  after  dinner,  by  a  telegram  from  the  King  of 
the  Belgians,  which  summoned  him  to  one  of  his  expedi 
tions  to  Central  Africa. 

Stanley  was  seldom  far  away  from  our  old  friend 
Major  Pond,  whom  the  London  Punch  once  referred  to 
as  "Lago  Maggiore,"  an  allusion  which  the  good  Major 
at  first  seemed  disposed  to  resent ! 

Going  one  day,  as  a  young  member,  into  the  library, 
where  hardly  any  one  ever  went,  I  found  a  curious 
little  coffee-colored  man  browsing  about  in  search  of 
something  he  could  not  find.  We  talked  long  together, 
and  I  did  not  know  who  he  was,  until  Petroleum  V. 


4   SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Nasby  came  in,  and  then  I  found  that  I  had  been  talk 
ing  with  Paul  du  Chaillu,  the  explorer  and  a  modern 
discoverer  of  the  African  gorilla. 

Do  you  remember  the  night  when,  in  these  rooms,  at 
a  dinner  to  Ian  Maclaren,  there  fell  from  the  lips  of 
William  Winter  a  picture  of  Scotland,  its  history,  its 
scenery,  and  its  poetry,  so  beautiful  that  Walter  Scott 
himself  could  never  have  surpassed  it;  and  how  the 
club  rose  to  Winter  as  one  man  ? 

Do  you  remember  how,  in  these  rooms,  one  night,  at  a 
dinner  to  our  fellow-member  Anton  Seidl,  Robert  G. 
Ingersoll,  speaking  reluctantly— and  I  know  that  Inger- 
soll  was  not  prepared  to  speak  that  night— spoke  in 
accents  which  seemed  enraptured,  in  praise  of  litera 
ture,  of  sculpture,  and  of  pictorial  art,  ending  what 
seemed  to  me  as  fine  a  speech  as  I  ever  heard,  with  a 
beautiful  tribute  to  music,  near  whose  throne  poor 
Seidl,  soon  to  go  to  the  grave,  and  soon  to  be  followed 
by  Ingersoll  himself,  occupied  so  high  a  place  ? 

Shall  I  remind  you  of  the  dinner  here  to  Charles  A. 
Dana,  when  something  in  the  speech  of  Horace  Porter 
recalled  to  our  guest  an  incident  of  the  Civil  War,  so 
forcibly  that,  as  General  Porter  concluded,  he  sprang  to 
his  feet  and  spoke  again,  in  that  clear  language  of  which 
he  was  so  fine  a  master,  describing  that  which  he  had 
seen,  so  vividly  that  Porter,  our  friend  and  comrade  of 
many  years,  seemed  again  the  brave  young  officer,  with 
sword  in  hand,  rallying  bodies  of  our  disorganized 
troops  amid  the  awful  slaughter  at  Chickamauga  ? 

Or  shall  I  remind  you  of  that  other  night  when  a  tiny 
little  man  spoke  here  for  an  hour  or  more,  with  great 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  5 

rapidity  of  utterance,  with  no  attempt  at  oratory,  but 
whose  earnest  simplicity  held  you  spellbound,  while 
General  Funston  told  the  story  of  the  war  in  the  Philip 
pines,  scarcely  mentioning  at  all  his  own  part  in  it, 
until,  at  the  end,  some  one  spoke  of  the  capture  of 
Aguinaldo,  when  he  began  again,  and  spoke  a  second 
time,  as  delightfully  as  before  ? 

Or  would  you  recall  the  story  of  Italian  opera  in  this 
country,  as  told  here  by  Parke  Godwin,  at  a  dinner  to 
the  two  De  Reszkes,  going  back  to  the  time  when  Jenny 
Lind  sang  at  Castle  Garden,  and  telling  us  of  the  much 
more  distant  time  when  his  wife,  as  a  child,  was  known 
to  Madame  Malibran,  the  first  opera  singer  of  conse 
quence  to  visit  this  country,  New  York  being,  in  1826, 
an  unimportant  place,  where  an  opera  troupe  made 
a  brief  stay  on  its  way  to  the  brilliant  capital  at 
Havana  ? 

Do  you  remember  how  often  Henry  Irving,  prince  of 
actors,  and,  to  those  who  knew  him  as  I  did,  prince 
among  men,  has  spoken  here  ?  And  the  stately  Choate  1 
And  old  Joe  Jefferson?  But  why  continue?  For  to 
repeat  the  names  of  those  who  have  spoken  upon  this 
spot  would  be  to  catalogue  the  brilliant  men  of  our 
time. 

These  rather  ill-shaped  rooms,  where  every  speaker 
is  at  a  disadvantage,  have  seemed  to  lend  themselves  to 
our  occasions  by  drawing  members  closer  together ;  and 
many  a  time,  from  under  this  doorway,  where,  from 
necessity,  your  table  of  honor  has  usually  been  placed, 
it  has  been  my  privilege  to  gaze  into  the  faces  of  an 
audience  so  lost  in  the  intellectual  enjoyment  of  the 


6   SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

moment  as  to  be  perfectly  oblivious  of  their  surround 
ings. 

And  what  an  audience ! 

The  late  James  C.  Carter,  speaking  here  once,  at 
tempted  to  define  this  club  as  being  " Upper  Bohemia." 
Mr.  Carter  was  one  of  the  most  profound  lawyers  of 
his  day,  and  his  mind  rebelled  against  anything  which 
he  could  not  define.  And  so  he  tried  to  define  this  club. 
To  what  extent  his  definition  was  correct,  I  do  not 
know.  The  Bohemian  boundaries  have  always  been 
indefinite,  and  even  Shakespeare  fell  into  the  error  of 
placing  the  scene  of  a  part  of  his  "Winter's  Tale" 
upon  the  coast  of  Bohemia,  although  Bohemia  had  no 
seacoast. 

We  are  soon  to  go  to  a  banqueting-hall  of  much 
greater  capacity  than  this,  which  I  am  told  will  also  be 
a  picture-gallery  unequaled  by  any  in  New  York ;  and, 
from  what  is  now  beginning  to  appear,  I  fear  that  what 
I  have  once  or  twice  unwittingly  said  to  the  club,  as  to 
the  modesty  and  simplicity  of  the  new  surroundings, 
will  not  entirely  be  made  good. 

But  whatever  may  be  its  surroundings,  whether 
splendid  or  humble,  my  greatest  wish  for  this  club  is 
that  it  may  always  strive  to  maintain  the  spirit  of  good 
fellowship,  a  devotion  to  literature  and  art,  to  be  among 
the  first  to  recognize  merit  in  the  artist  or  man  of  let 
ters,  and  to  welcome  the  distinguished  stranger  who 
comes  to  our  city ;  for  these  have  been  the  things  which 
have  distinguished  this  club  from  others. 

The  evolution  to  the  new  house  has  been  attended  by 
some  picturesque  circumstances,  characteristic  of  a 
somewhat  eccentric  organization. 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  7 

It  would  never  have  answered  to  do  the  thing  in  a 
commonplace  way.  If  we  had  never  got  into  trouble, 
how  could  we  ever  have  got  out  of  it  ? 

First  came  the  sale  of  this  property;  then  the  ac 
quirement  of  the  property  in  Fifty-seventh  Street ;  then 
the  tearing  down  of  the  building  which  occupied  the 
Fifty-seventh  Street  site;  next,  opportunely,  the  panic 
of  1907,  tying  up  the  resources  with  which  the  new 
house  was  to  have  been  built  and  paid  for;  and  then 
came  our  great  and  good  friend,  renowned  for  gener 
osity  the  world  over,  our  fellow-member,  Mr.  Andrew 
Carnegie,  and  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  club  the 
amount  of  which  it  stood  in  need;  and  out  of  our 
dilemma  grew  a  triumph,  and  the  new  house,  where 
steel  beams  were  first  set  only  at  the  end  of  May,  will 
be  ready  for  your  occupation  at  the  end  of  January. 

In  the  new  house  the  club  will  desire  an  addition  to 
its  membership,  but  it  is  to  be  hoped  that  there  will  be 
no  rapid  or  radical  change.  Let  us  not  take  into  our 
system  more  than  we  can  assimilate,  and  let  us  carefully 
restrict  membership  to  those  who  share  our  tastes  and 
who  have  something  in  common  with  us. 

But  the  club  will  soon  need  new  blood;  it  needs  it 
now.  And  I  am  glad  to  see  some  younger  men  among 
the  recent  members.  They  are  welcome  here.  There 
is  work  for  them  to  do.  Places  in  the  front  rank  will 
soon  become  vacant,  and  must  be  filled  by  them.  We 
have  faith  and  hope  in  a  brilliant  future  for  this  club, 
a  future  surpassing  its  past,  but  this  must  be  mainly 
worked  out  through  the  efforts  of  the  younger  men. 

And  as  for  us,  we  have  tried  to  preserve  the  tradi 
tions  which  came  from  the  generation  before ;  as  for  us, 


8   SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  old  ones,  who  are  soon  to  pass  from  the  stage,  the 
words  of  the  gladiators  are  upon  our  lips,  it  is  Morituri 
te  salutamis.  We  must  accept  our  fate ;  but  can  we  do 
better  than  follow  the  advice  of  the  poet  Beranger,  and 
try  to 

Live  backward,  and  change  into  a  Springtime  the  Winter 
that  comes ! 


THEODOEE  ROOSEVELT 

(VICE-PRESIDENT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  BENJAMIN  B.  ODELL,  JR., 
MARCH  23,  1901 

I  ESTEEM  myself  fortunate  in  having  a  chance  to 
come  before  you  to  briefly  pay  my  tribute  of  respect 
and  admiration  for  the  Governor  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  of  whom  not  merely  those  of  his  party,  but  all 
the  citizens  of  the  State,  have  the  right  to  feel  proud, 
because  he  is  the  Governor  of  all  the  State,  bent  upon 
doing  all  that  in  him  lies  to  carry  the  State  onward 
and  upward. 

The  bed  of  the  Governor  of  the  State  is  not  always  a 
bed  of  roses.  Of  course,  he  has  his  difficulties;  of 
course,  he  has  troubles.  Do  any  of  you  know  a  task 
worth  doing  which  has  not  its  difficulties?  Do  any  of 
you  know  a  prize  worth  winning  which  has  not  to  be 
won  by  hard  effort?  It  is  because  the  task  is  so  well 
worth  doing ;  it  is  because  you  are  doing  it  so  well,  that 
difficulties  inevitably  arise,  Governor  Odell.  The  Gov 
ernor  is  not  to  be  pitied  or  even  sympathized  with 
because  of  those  difficulties.  He  is  having  a  pretty  good 
time.  Any  man  who  properly  appreciates  the  honor  it 
is  to  be  the  chief  executive  of  this  great  State  will  not 
only  feel  the  most  solemn  sense  of  responsibility  for 


10  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  performance  of  the  duties  of  his  office,  but  will  feel, 
if  he  deserves,  as  you  have  deserved,  the  sense  that  he 
has  done  them  right,  a  profound  satisfaction  in  the 
performance  of  his  duties  that  can  come  to  him  in 
hardly  any  other  way.  It  is  a  great  task,  but  it  is  one 
of  the  most  honorable  of  all  tasks ;  he  should  be  praised 
who  has  done  it  well,  as  you  have  done  it. 

Mr.  President,  you  were  kind  enough  in  introducing 
me  to  speak  of  the  opportunities  open  to  young  men. 
I  have  never  sympathized  with  those  excellent  but  per 
haps  not  too  red-blooded  people  who  feel  that  the  day 
of  doing  big  things  is  over.  There  is  any  amount  of 
excellent  work  to  be  done  in  the  world,  and  it  can  be 
done  and  done  well  by  those  who  will  do  it  for  the  sake 
of  doing  it  well,  and  to  whom  the  having  done  it  well 
is  reward  enough. 

Happy  are  we  who  have  lived  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  in  a  century  dealing  with  great  events,  with 
great  men  who  figure  in  these  great  events ;  and  happier 
still  are  those  who  stand  on  the  threshold  of  the  new 
century  with  the  long  years  lying  before  us,  whose 
life  is  before  them,  with  the  determination  to  make  of 
this  nation  what  it  should  be  made:  one  of  the  great 
nations— we  hope  the  greatest  nation  of  all.  And  it 
can  be  done  by  each  doing  his  duty,  each  in  his  place 
supporting  those  who  have  the  important  duties  in  their 
places.  The  country,  the  nation  can  be  put  where  we 
believe  it  should  be  put  by  each  of  us  doing  his  duty, 
each  in  his  place,  as  you  have  done,  Governor  Odell,  in 
your  place  as  Governor  of  the  State  of  New  York  dur 
ing  the  months  that  have  just  been  passed. 

I  am  under  great  obligations,  obligations  that,  of 


THEODORE  ROOSEVELT  11 

course,  I  can  never  repay,  to  the  people  of  this  State 
for  what  they  have  done  for  me.  It  has  been  the  great 
est  pleasure  to  have  served  them  according  to  the  light 
that  was  in  me,  according  to  the  capacity  that  I  had, 
in  the  past.  It  was  the  greatest  pleasure  to  be  asso 
ciated  with  so  many  men  who  have  aided  and  helped 
me,  who  held  up  my  hands.  It  was  a  particular  pleas 
ure  to  be  associated  with  you,  Governor  Odell,  during 
the  two  years  that  I  was  Governor,  and  to  feel  that 
now  I  can  be  numbered  among  your  friends  and  sup 
porters  and  admirers  in  my  turn. 

In  speaking  to  this  audience,  I  don't  wish  to  seem  to 
assume  a  needlessly  solemn  attitude,  and  yet,  I  think  it 
is  a  good  thing  for  all  of  us  to  understand  the  weighty 
responsibilities  that  rest  upon  the  man  in  that  office. 
Heavy  are  his  duties ;  great  are  his  responsibilities.  He 
is  trying  to  act  for  seven  millions  of  people,  diverse  in 
interest,  diverse  in  so  many  things.  We  know  he  can 
do  that  work  to  the  best  possible  advantage  only  when 
he  has  the  cordial  support  of  each  of  us,  as  it  is  given, 
as  we  find  ourselves  able  to  render  that  support  to  him. 
And  I  ask  in  closing,  that  all  of  us,  all  citizens  who  are 
proud  of  New  York,  all  citizens  who  are  not  only  good 
New  Yorkers  but  good  Americans,  that  each  of  us,  as 
he  finds  it  in  his  power,  shall  do  his  best  to  help  Gov 
ernor  Odell  to  discharge  the  whole  of  his  duty— the 
large  and  great  duties  of  the  office  upon  which  he 
has  so  worthily  entered. 


SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  BENJAMIN  B.  ODELL,  JR., 
MARCH  23,  1901 

1  LATELY  had  the  pleasure  and  the  honor  of  visit 
ing  Governor  Odell  on  matters  of  public  business  in 
his  political  home  in  the  State  House,  in  the  bosom  of- 
his  political  family  the  Legislature,  a  family  made  trp 
in  the  proportion  of  three  Republicans  for  business  to 
one  Democrat  for  ornament  and  social  elevation.  I 
went  up  there  without  salary  to  plead  against  the  re 
duction,  the  proposed  reduction,  of  the  citizen's  lib 
erties,  and  to  vote  against  the  Ramapo  Bill  in  the 
Senate,  if  I  could  get  a  chance  to  enter  upon  the  floor 
of  the  House,  and  to  introduce  a  police  bill.  Not  be 
cause  they  were  running  short  of  police  bills. '  And  if 
the  Governor  would  promise  to  sign  it,  my  bill  would 
pass.  -I  am  privileged  on  the  floor  of  the  House  any 
where  in  all  the  legislative  bodies  in  the  world,  a 
thing  that  happened  by  accident  rather  than  merit. 
I  wanted  to  introduce  that  police  bill.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  it  was  a  very  good  idea.  Now  it  was  not  like 
any  other  police  bill  that  has  ever  been  introduced 
anywhere.  There  was  a  little  self-interest  in  it,  here 
and  there,  and  my  scheme  was  to  have  none  but  authors 
on  the  police.  Well,  for  myself,  I  wanted  to  be  the 

12 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  13 

chief  of  police,  not  because  I  thought  I  was  really 
qualified  for  the  place,  but  because  I  was  tired  and 
wanted  a  rest.  I  wanted  Mr.  Howells  for  first  deputy, 
not  because  Mr.  Howells  knows  anything  about  those 
things,  but  because  he  was  tired  too.  A  lot  of  us 
authors  are  tired.  And  now  that  Mr.  Depew  has  pub 
lished  speeches  and  other  books,  and  has  become  an 
author,  I  wanted  him  for  second  deputy.  Not  because 
he  is  tired,  because  he  is  n't,  but  because  he  is  one  of 
those  men  who  do  all  things  well,  and  he  could  run  the 

t —    V— 

police  business  and  I  could  take  the  salary!  .And, 
besides,  more  than  that,  he  and  I  have  a  tie.  Indeed, 
we  are  members  of  the  celebrated  Class  of  '53  of  Yale, 
only  he  was  there  before  I  was.  And  another  thing, 
he  is  a  Missourian,  like  me.  And  in  the  Missourians 
there  is  no  guile.  And  there  is  a  nearer  tie  still.  When 
I  was  born  I  was  a  member  of  a  firm  of  twins.  And 
one  of  them  disappeared,  and  it  has  been  borne  in  upon 
me  of  late  that  the  personal  resemblance  between 
Depew  and  me,  and  the  general  handsome  style  and 
grace  of  form  and  figure  and  things  of  that  sort,  and 
activity  of  speech,  and— well,  it  proves  to  me  that  that 
long  lost  twin  is  here ! 

Well,  I  wanted— I  wanted  Stedman,  and  Aldrich, 
and  Brander  Matthews,  and  Crawford,  and  Cable  for 
the  Broadway  squad,  and  others  for  the  Red  Light 
district,  and  others  still  to  take  care  of  the  pretty  mani 
curists. 

Now,  that  bill  I  drew  myself.  That  was  my  dream ; 
it  was  my  hope ;  my  ambition ;  but  it  failed  like  so  many 
bright  dreams  in  this  disappointing  world.  Governor 
Odell  would  n't  favor  it.  He  said  that  authors  were 


14  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

well  enough  in  their  place,  but  he  said,  "It  would  n't 
do  for  me  to  leave  the  city  unprotected. "  Now,  that 
remark  was  irrelevant.  It  was  n't  discreet.  The  very 
thing  I  was  trying  to  do  was  to  protect  the  city.  He 
said  the  authors  as  police— that  it  would  be  worse  than 
Ramapo,  but  I  can't  agree  with  him.  Ramapo  is  au 
thorized  to  bring  on  a  water  famine— authors  never 
do  that. 

Well,  I  shall  never  forget  to  be  grateful  to  the  Legis 
lature  up  there  for  the  hospitalities  extended  to  me  and 
for  the  chance  that  I  had  to  hear  a  reverend  gentleman 
speak  from  his  impromptu  speech  which  he  read  from 
type-written  manuscript,  and  in  which  he  did  for  me 
again  what  has  been  done  so  often  before— blasted  my 
character— what  was  left  of  it.  He  said  that  if  I  had 
my  just  deserts  I  would  not  be  a  guest  there,  I  should 
be  a  guest  somewhere  else  maybe,  or  be  dangling  from 
a  lamp-post  somewhere.  He  was  telling  about  the  last 
time  that  I  broke  jail— and  said  that  I  carried  off  sev 
eral  pairs  of  boots  belonging  to  other  folks.  This  state 
ment  was  a  lie,  only  that;  and  he  knew  that  perfectly 
well.  He  was  there  a  guest  in  that  place,  and  so  was  I ; 
and  he  was  so  interested  in  drawing  my  character  in 
the  past— although  he  came  there  to  absolutely  obliter 
ate  me  before  the  people.  He  had  n't  anything  personal 
against  me,  except  that  I  was  opposed  to  the  political 
war,  and  he  said  I  was  a  traitor  and  did  n't  go  to  fight 
in  the  Philippines.  That  does  n't  prove  anything. 
That  does  n't  prove  a  man  is  a  traitor.  Where  's  the 
evidence?  There  are  seventy-five  millions  of  us  work 
ing  our  patriotism.  He  did  the  same  thing  himself. 
It  would  be  an  entirely  different  question  if  the  coun- 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  15 

try's  life  was  in  danger,  its  existence  at  stake;  then — 
that  is  one  kind  of  patriotism— we  would  all  come  for 
ward  and  stand  by  the  flag,  and  stop  thinking  about 
whether  the  nation  was  right  or  wrong ;  but  when  there 
is  no  question  that  the  nation  is  in  any  way  in  danger, 
but  only  some  little  war  away  off,  then  it  may  be  that 
on  the  question  of  politics  the  nation  is  divided,  half- 
patriots  and  half -traitors,  and  no  man  can  tell  which 
from  which. 


WILLIAM  HENEY  WHITE 

(VICE-PRESIDENT  OF  THE  CLUB) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE, 
NOVEMBER  16,  1901 

THE  Lotos  Club,  founded  upon  ideas,  and  faithless 
as  it  possibly  has  been  to  most  of  them,  has  been 
loyal  to  two.  One  is  good  fellowship,  and  the  other 
hospitality. 

Our  guest  of  to-night  seems  somehow  to  have  exem 
plified  the  idea  of  the  Lotos  Club,  and  I  say  for  you  to 
him,  that  of  all  the  distinguished  men  who  have  pre 
ceded  him  at  our  board,  and  at  our  hearth  fire,  no  man 
has  so  eminently  taught  what  the  Lotos  Club  stands  for 
in  club  life. 

Mr.  Carnegie  in  the  crypt  of  the  club  some  months 
ago  heartily  agreed  with  me  that  the  Lotos  Club  seemed 
to  recognize  nothing  in  money,  nothing  in  genealogy, 
nothing  in  politics,  but  seemed  to  reduce  everything  to 
the  simple  concrete  fact  of  good  fellowship.  He  was 
true ;  the  thought  was  right.  A  man  who  is  not  a  good- 
fellow  has  no  standing  in  the  Lotos  Club. 

Therefore,  as  I  face  your  guest  I  desire  to  express  to 
him  for  you  a  hearty  welcome ;  to  toast  him  as  one  who, 
by  great  achievements  in  his  profession,  by  his  oratory 
and  his  wit,  and  by  genial  companionship,  has  honored 

16 


WILLIAM  HENRY  WHITE  17 

this  community  and  endeared  himself  to  his  contem 
poraries. 

I  ask  you  to  rise  and  drink  with  me,  health,  long 
life,  and  undiminished  gaiety  of  soul  to  the  Honorable 
Joseph  H.  Choate. 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 

(AMERICAN  AMBASSADOR  AT  THE  COURT  OF  ST.  JAMES) 
AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  NOVEMBEE  16,  1901 

SINCE  I  left  these  shores  I  have  seen  many  distin 
guished  companies,  but  never  one  like  this.  Such 
modesty;  such  self -shrinking  embodied  in  the  person 
and  character  of  the  vice-president  of  the  club;  such 
hiding  of  his  light  under  a  bushel!  I  think  you  may 
search  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  through 
without  finding  an  equal  or  a  rival  of  the  Lotos  Club. 

I  appreciate  the  extraordinary  honor  you  have,  as 
your  vice-president  put  it,  done  to-night  to  me  and  to 
yourselves.  I  reciprocate  his  overtures  of  hospitality, 
and  if  you  will  come  to  London,  individually  or  col 
lectively,  I  promise  to  apply  to  your  entertainment  all 
that  remains  of  my  salary  after  paying  the  house  rent. 
If  the  whole  membership  of  the  club  comes  together, 
there  won't  be  very  much  to  go  round;  and  if  you 
should  come  a  second  time,  it  might  be  a  mere  Barme- 
cidean  feast ;  but  my  heart  will  go  with  it  to  every  one. 

Seriously,  I  do  say,  as  your  chairman  said  somewhat 
jocosely,  that  I  do  consider  this  the  greatest  compli 
ment  that  I  have  received.  But  it  is  an  evidence  to  me 
that  three  years  of  absence  have  not  killed  the  attach 
ment  which  I  had  been  forty  years  acquiring  among 

18 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE  19 

you.  Now,  I  am  not  here  to-night  to  discuss  any  public 
questions.  Reticence  is  impressed  upon  me  as  the  first 
law  of  my  being,  and  for  the  last  three  years  I  have 
been  afflicted  with  political  lockjaw.  When  I  recover 
from  that  infirmity  I  shall  return  to  those  subjects 
which  in  former  years  I  did  like  so  much  to  discuss. 
To-night  what  I  shall  have  to  say  to  you  will  be  more 
purely  of  a  personal  nature. 

When  I  arrived  in  that  wonderful  ship  of  the  Ameri 
can  line,  I  found  myself  surrounded  by  strangers,  but 
yet  friends,  who  stuck  closer  than  so  many  brothers. 
They  would  not  be  shaken  off.  Even  my  friend 
Speaker  Reed,  I  believe,  would  hardly  be  able  to 
escape  or  veto  them.  One  question  governed  and  con 
trolled  them  all:  ''What  are  you  coming  home  for?" 
Well,  I  had  kept  it  as  a  very  great  secret,  to  be  dis 
cussed  for  the  first  time  here  to-night.  And  imme 
diately,  as  is  the  custom  with  the  men  of  that  craft, 
they  indulged  in  every  possible  supposition,  public  and 
private,  as  to  the  reason  for  my  return;  and  now,  for 
the  first  time,  I  am  prepared  to  disclose  it.  And  I  will 
tell  you  confidentially,  not  to  go  any  farther,  the  reason 
of  my  coming.  I  came  because  I  was  a  little,  or,  rather, 
I  may  say,  I  was  not  a  little  homesick.  I  wanted  to 
breathe  once  more  a  little  American  air.  None  of  your 
second-hand,  breathed-over  stuff,  but  American  air,  fresh 
every  morning  from  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  the  Atlan 
tic.  I  wanted  to  revel  in  a  little  American  sunshine. 
Why,  there  is  more  real,  pure,  honest  sunshine  in  one 
bright  October  day  in  Stockbridge  or  New  York  than  in 
a  whole  winter  of  London.  Perhaps  you  have  read 
what  I  have  escaped:  that  great  national  institution, 


20  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  London  fog,  which  has  clothed  the  British  Isles  in 
a  pall  of  sorrow  ever  since  I  left.  And  then  I  wanted 
to  touch  foot  once  more  upon  American  soil,  the  real 
thing,  not  the  fictitious  article  which  Americans  in 
London  come  to  in  my  hired  house  in  the  Embassy  as 
a  temporary  shelter  on  American  soil,  but  the  real 
mother  earth  from  which  we  sprung  and  to  which  we 
shall  return.  Was  it  not  Brutus,  Mr.  Chairman,  at 
Delphi— 

The  Chairman :  I  think  it  was. 

The  chairman  says  he  thinks  it  was ;  he  could  safely  say 
that  before  he  knew  what  it  was— but  I  believe  it  was 
Brutus  at  Delphi  who,  when  the  oracle  said  that  he 
should  rule  at  Rome  who  should  first  kiss  his  mother, 
pretended  to  be  stupid  and  stumbled,  and  kissed  the 
earth  which  was  the  mother  of  us  all.  Well  now,  I 
should  like  to  try  that  osculatory  experiment.  But  not 
upon  the  pavements  of  New  York  City.  But  if  you  will 
give  me  a  chance  in  my  native  State  of  Massachusetts, 
somewhere  on  the  rocky  coast  of  Essex,  or  in  the  granite 
hills  of  Berkshire,  I  really  believe  I  could  drink  in  a 
fresh  draught  of  inspiration  from  kissing  the  soil  of 
my  native  land. 

Now,  I  intend  to  tell  you  what  I  have  been  doing 
abroad.  I  don't  think  I  have  done  as  much  as  the 
president  in  his  letter  was  good  enough  to  say,  but  I 
have  enjoyed  myself  a  great  deal  there.  You  all  know, 
many  of  you  have  personally  experienced,  the  gener 
osity  and  the  freedom  of  English  hospitality.  I  am  sure 
that  you  do  not  know— I  am  sure  that  nobody  who  has 
not  been  there  during  the  last  three  years  can  fully 
realize  what  a  steadfast  purpose  our  brethren  on  the 


JOSEPH  H.   CHOATE  21 

other  side  of  the  Atlantic  have  to  maintain  the  friend 
ship  that  happily  exists  between  the  two  places.  I  may 
not  discuss  any  of  those  questions  which  affect  the 
relations  of  the  two  countries,  but  I  believe  from  what 
I  know  of  the  people  of  both,  that  any  questions  that 
arise  will  be  harmoniously,  amicably,  and  honorably 
adjusted. 

Now  you  still  have  the  right,  I  think,  to  have  me  tell 
you,  in  view  of  your  most  cordial  reception  of  me  here 
to-night,  and  of  this,  to  me,  unprecedented  honor  that 
you  have  paid  me— that  I  should  tell  you  how  my  three 
years  of  absence  abroad  have  affected  me,  and  what  are 
my  impressions  of  this  great  city  of  my  adoption  on  my 
return  to  it  after  so  long  an  absence.  Well,  let  me  say 
that  I  don't  believe  that  any  intelligent  American  can 
remain  abroad  so  long  as  I  have,  without  gathering, 
month  by  month  and  year  by  year,  increased  and  inten 
sified  love  and  affection  for  the  land  of  his  birth,  and 
increasing  admiration  for  her  government  and  her  in 
stitutions.  Let  me  say  a  word  seriously  on  that  subject 
from  the  bottom  of  my  heart.  I  suppose  that  at  the  dis 
tance  we  get  a  different  and  perhaps  a  better  perspec 
tive  than  those  who  remain  at  home,  and  for  one  I  am 
more  and  more  convinced,  to  me  it  is  absolutely  clear 
without  any  possibility  of  doubt  or  contradiction,  that 
the  cardinal  principle  that  underlies  our  government, 
our  laws,  and  our  policy,  namely,  the  absolute  civil  and 
political  equality  of  all  citizens,  aided  by  the  right  of 
universal  suffrage,  is  the  secret  of  America's  success. 
Aided  by  that  generous  and  comprehensive  and  un- 
equaled  system  of  general  education  which  qualifies 
every  citizen  not  only  to  pursue  his  calling  but  to  exer- 


22  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

else  the  elective  franchise,  it  puts  America  on  the 
magnificent  plane  that  she  occupies  to-day.  And  again 
I  say  that  it  passes  my  comprehension  how  any  intelli 
gent  and  observant  citizen  can  go  abroad  and  remain 
abroad  without  returning  a  greater  admirer,  a  warmer 
lover,  a  more  devoted  friend  and  champion  of  his  own 
country  than  he  was  before. 

Now  what  shall  I  say  about  New  York  ? 

Mr.  Carnegie :  Be  careful,  Mr.  Speaker. 
As  my  friend  has  just  said,  from  such  a  man  as  Mr. 
Carnegie,  when  I  get  a  hint  to  be  careful,  I  will  go 
ahead  and  say  exactly  what  I  think.  It  seems  to  me 
that  New  York  to-day  is  just  beginning  its  progress. 
It  seems  to  me  that  in  the  last  three  years  it  has  devel 
oped  more  signs  of  growth,  of  power,  and  of  influence 
than  in  any  decade  that  has  preceded  it.  I  have  been 
an  observer  of  the  growth  of  New  York  for  now  well- 
nigh  fifty  years.  When  I  first  landed  here,  when  I  first 
came  as  a  visitor  to  this  metropolis,  great  city  as  we 
then  thought  it,  it  was  a  little  city  of  much  less  than  a 
million  people.  The  New  Haven  Railroad  landed  the 
New  England  immigrant  in  Canal  Street.  Twenty- 
third  Street  was  out  of  the  city.  And  some  years  after 
that,  even  when  Mr.  Eno  started  the  great  project  of 
building  the  Fifth  Avenue  Hotel,  it  was  denounced  as 
Eno's  Folly,  for  they  said  that  nobody  would  come  so 
far  out-of-town  to  stay  overnight.  The  horse  railroad, 
then  in  its  infancy,  was  looked  upon  as  rapid  transit 
already  realized.  And  Trinity  Church — the  spire  of 
Trinity  Church  towered  high  above  everything  else. 
Stephen  "Whitney,  an  old  merchant,  the  sole  survivor 
then  of  the  down-town  center  of  fashion,  held  the  last 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE  23 

palace  at  No.  7  Bowling  Green.  And  now  what  do  we 
see  ?  Why,  in  fifty  years,  until  Greater  New  York  was 
created  four  years  ago,  there  was  a  magnificent  series 
of  strides,  each  greater  than  any  that  had  gone  before, 
and  each  prodigious  in  itself,  and  there  when  the  new 
municipality  was  brought  into  being,  the  second  city  of 
the  world;  and  yet,  it  seems  to  me,  that  in  the  three 
years  that  I  have  been  abroad,  there  are  signs  of  growth 
and  progress  never  before  dreamed  of. 

As  we  approached  the  city  from  the  bay  vast  palaces 
of  industry  and  commerce  were  scraping  the  sky  with 
their  battlemented  fronts,  and  giving  the  whole  city 
the  appearance  of  a  fortified  citadel.  And  then  as  we 
landed,  every  man,  woman,  and  child  seemed  to  be 
moving  by  the  force  of  steam  or  electricity,  as  though 
they  were  full  of  that  force  in  person,  each  man  himself 
an  automobile.  And  as  we  advanced  up -town  the  whole 
city  seemed  to  be  undermined,  excavated,  earthquaked, 
as  though  titanic  engineers  were  working  their  way 
through  the  bowels  of  her  soil.  Subterranean  explo 
sions  in  all  directions  indicated  that  the  war  of  the 
elements  was  waging  below  the  surface  of  the  city,  and 
I  believe  they  were.  Sulphurous  streams,  emitted  every 
few  rods  of  our  passage,  seemed  to  indicate  that  Titans 
indeed  were  at  work  below ;  and,  if  I  rightly  understand 
it,  that  gigantic,  that  marvelous  piece  of  engineering 
and  mining  combined,  is  but  the  beginning  of  a  new 
growth  of  this  great  and  wondrous  city. 

It  seems  to  me  that  I  have  returned  at  a  moment,  at 
an  era,  of  grand  upheavals,  physical,  financial,  intel 
lectual,  and  political.  I  have  told  you  what  I  have 
observed  of  the  physical  upheaval.  Then  take  the 


24  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

financial  upheaval.  I  understand  that  everybody  has 
grown  very  rich;  that  at  all  the  corners  of  the  streets 
you  will  meet  multi-millionaires  with  pockets  bursting 
at  very  step.  Combinations  are  formed  surpassing  in 
magnitude  anything  that  ever  was  known  before.  It 
seemed  to  me  that  the  genie  of  Aladdin  had  returned 
for  practical  work  on  this  island.  No  sooner  has  one 
vast  combination  of  wealth  been  created  than  it  is  swal 
lowed  up  by  another  still  greater  and  greedier  than  the 
last. 

And  then  the  intellectual  development  in  these  three 
years— our  two  great  universities  in  their  magnificent 
homes  on  the  highest  elevations  in  the  city  have  been 
completed,  and  are  endowed  with  facilities  which  will 
give  them  their  true  and  leading  place  among  the  edu 
cational  institutions  of  the  world. 

The  reservoir,  which  was  so  dear  to  the  hearts  of  all 
citizens  of  New  York  for  the  last  fifty  years,  which  was 
admired  so  much  for  its  architectural  beauty,  and  filled 
with  a  fluid  influence  which  it  was  supposed  to  exert 
upon  the  city,  has  given  place  to  the  foundations  of  a 
great  library  which  will  be  the  leading  center  of  light 
and  knowledge  for  generations  to  come.  And  our  two 
institutions,  the  Museums  of  Art  and  Natural  History, 
enriched  by  the  generosity  of  the  gentlemen  connected 
with  them,  one  of  whom,  the  president  of  the  Museum 
of  Natural  History,  I  am  proud  to  see  here  to-night. 
They  have  taken  their  place  among  the  great  educa 
tional  museums  of  the  world.  And  all  this  has  been 
accomplished  in  these  three  years. 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  think  I  have  said  pretty  nearly  all 
I  can  think  of.  There  is  only  one  more  subject  of  great 


JOSEPH  H.   CHOATE  25 

advantage ;  that  is,  to  return  to  the  subject  with  which 
I  set  out— the  glory,  the  might,  and  the  magnificence  of 
the  Lotos  Club,  and  the  dignity  and  brains,  the  signs 
of  good  fellowship  of  each  of  its  members,  so  well  illus 
trated  by  and  so  well  incorporated  in  the  person  of  your 
vice-president.  Gentlemen,  I  thank  you  with  all  my 
heart  for  this  magnificent  greeting.  When  you  return 
my  visit,  as  I  hope  you  will,  you  will  find  the  latch- 
string  out.  You  may  find  it  a  little  ragged,  but  it  will 
always  be  out. 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE, 
NOVEMBER  16,  1901 

I  HAVE  listened  with  great  pleasure,  as  you  all  have, 
to  the  heartfelt,  moving  address  of  our  guest  of  this 
evening,  our  Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  I 
appreciate  his  feelings.  I  am  absent  at  some  times 
from  this  country,  and  from  New  York,  and  I  never 
return  without  being  more  and  more  oppressed— yes, 
gentlemen,  impressed  and  oppressed  by  the  speed  at 
which  our  country  is  advancing;  by  the  advantages 
which  it  has  over  all  other  lands,  especially  in  those 
great  fundamental  principles  to  which  our  Ambassador 
has  referred,  the  equality  of  the  citizen,  universal 
suffrage,  and  equal  electoral  districts— one  man,  one 
vote. 

Our  guest  has  said  ten  times  more  than  I  said  in 
Southampton  in  regard  to  New  York,  which  attracted 
attention  in  Britain,  and  after  reflection  I  have  n't  the 
slightest  hesitation  in  saying  that  not  only  every  word 
that  I  said  is  true,  but  that  all  that  our  honored  guest 
said  to-night  is  true ;  and  this  is  saying  a  great  deal  for 
any  ambassador. 

Wherever  I  go,  Mr.  Choate,  I  try  to  counteract  that 
hypercritical  spirit  which  prevails  among  a  certain 

26 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  27 

class  of  our  people  who  stay  at  home  and  don't  know 
the  disadvantages  of  other  lands,  who  only  see  the  spots 
in  the  sun  of  their  own,  spots  that  would  not  be  seen 
at  all  except  for  the  very  brightness  of  the  great  orb 
itself,  our  beloved  Republic.  I  said  to  a  man  who  met 
me  at  Southampton,  one  of  fifteen,  I  think,  who  asked 
me: 

"Mr.  Carnegie,  we  want  to  know,  here  in  England, 
why  you  could  give  so  much  money  to  a  city  so  corrupt, 
so  vile,  so  wicked  as  New  York, ' '  and  I  said : 

"My  friend,  listen  to  me.  The  city  of  New  York  is 
in  many  respects  the  best-governed  city  in  this  world ! 
Look  at  your  London,  still  buying  its  water  from 
private  corporations  the  shares  of  which  were  one 
pound  and  are  now  twenty-one  hundred  pounds,  and 
furnishing  only  thirty  gallons  a  day  to  each  inhabitant, 
and  to  some  of  them  not  even  that.  Contrast  New 
York,  owning  its  own  water-supply,  with  its  hundred 
gallons  a  day  for  every  one,  and  more  in  reserve,  and 
then  with  the  work  in  progress  to-day  which  will  yield 
that  supply  for  future  generations.  Contrast  our  pub 
lic  parks  of  New  York  with  your  parks.  You  can  get 
no  more  breathing  spaces  in  London.  It  has  not  looked 
ahead.  New  York  has  bought  several  thousands  of  acres 
in  the  Bronx  and  also  at  Pelham  for  new  parks.  It  takes 
wise  heads  to  manage  for  New  York  like  that.  Look  at 
the  wharves  New  York  is  now  building  all  round  the 
island.  There  is  nothing  to  compare  with  those  granite 
wharves  in  the  world ;  and  more  than  that,  they  will  pay 
for  themselves  in  thirty  years,  and  not  cost  a  cent.  The 
sinking-fund  out  of  revenues  is  paying  off  the  bonds. 
It  takes  wise  management  to  do  that,  gentlemen.  This 


28  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

means  foresight  and  brains.  And  when  the  city  is  so 
governed  that  it  does  such  things  as  that,  I  don't  care 
which  party  is  in  power,  the  great  progress  of  New 
York  is  not  to  be  impeded  by  any  party  or  by  all  par 
ties.  We  unduly  criticize  our  officials,  and  fail  to 
praise  them  where  praise  is  deserved. ' ' 

Enough  of  this.  The  unique  honor  paid  to  the  Am 
bassador  to-night,  the  feature  of  this  dinner,  has  not 
been  referred  to. 

[Turning  to  Mr.  Choate:] 

Your  Excellency,  now  that  you  have  been  accus 
tomed  to  the  various  customs  prevailing  in  the  cities 
of  Europe,  in  Great  Britain,  of  presenting  the  freedom 
of  cities  to  yourself  and  other  distinguished  citizens, 
the  Lotos  Club  resolved  that  they  would  do  you  the 
unique  honor  of  presenting  in  a  golden  casket  the  free 
dom  of  the  Lotos  Club ;  that  includes  much  more  than 
the  city  of  New  York. 

Of  course,  you  will  not  ask  me,  as  I  asked  a  provost 
who  was  presenting  me  with  the  freedom  of  a  city  in 
Scotland,  "What  goes  with  the  freedom?  I  know  that 
Burns  says  that  freedom  and  whisky  'gang  thegither.'  " 

"Well,"  he  said,  "Mr.  Carnegie,  I  don't  know 
whether  Burns  was  right,  but  I  can  assure  you  that 
whisky  does  go  with  freedom  in  this  city. ' ' 

Gentlemen,  referring  to  the  hypercritical  spirit  of  the 
man  who  finds  nothing  good  in  his  own  country— I  find 
most  everything  good  here,  I  am  an  optimist— we  have 
the  complaints  of  the  Civil  Service  Commission  that  we 
have  no  trained  diplomats ;  there  should  be  generation 
after  generation  of  young  men  taught  how  to  manage 
the  business  of  our  country  at  foreign  courts. 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  29 

Well,  we  made  such  a  bad  start  when  this  Republic 
was  established!  Why,  we  sent  nobody  better  than 
Franklin,  and  Adams,  and  Jay;  and  then  we  sent  a 
Lee;  and  we  followed  that  up  by  sending  such  men  to 
the  Court  of  St.  James  as  Lowell,  Phelps,  Bayard,  and 
Hay !  And  then  did  we  fall  down,  down,  very  far  when 
we  sent  the  gentleman  we  have  met  to  honor  to-night? 

That  is  what  we  do  in  this  country,  for  the  lack  of 
Civil  Service  training  for  diplomats.  Can  you  tell  me 
that  any  school  equals  the  world  of  affairs,  the  universal 
school,  for  training  men  who  will  attend  to  our  business 
at  foreign  courts?  You  take  a  man  like  our  guest. 
Consider  what  it  means  when  he  visits  the  Prime  Min 
ister  or  the  Foreign  Minister  of  Great  Britain  for  the 
week-end,  and  spends  two  or  three  days;  or  visits  His 
Majesty.  When  you  come  to  the  Prime  Minister, 
and  our  friend,  our  guest  to-night,  consider  what  in 
fluence  a  man  like  he  can  exert  during  the  few  days  he 
spends  in  the  home  of  the  Minister  of  Great  Britain. 
Gentlemen,  the  best  diplomat  does  his  work  quietly, 
sometimes  like  a  mole,  underground;  you  don't  know 
how.  He  advertises  all  the  good  things  of  his  own  coun 
try  and  does  not  advertise  himself.  But  I  tell  you,  if 
the  secret  history  is  ever  written  of  the  delicate  negotia 
tions  which  have  resulted  in  favor  of  this  country,  we 
shall  know  what  our  Ambassador  has  attained  by  these 
visits  of  his.  He  has  told  his  hosts  some  very  plain 
truths,  I  doubt  not,  but  always  in  the  most  diplomatic 
language.  Much  credit,  I  am  certain,  is  due  to  Mr. 
Choate,  our  Ambassador,  for  the  very  satisfactory  set 
tlement  of  all  the  differences  between  the  old  country 
and  the  new. 


30  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

We  send  him  forth  as  one  of  the  most  precious  fruits 
of  this  land  of  triumphant  democracy,  in  which  one 
man's  privilege  is  every  man's  right.  We  are  all  very 
proud  of  you,  Mr.  Choate,  as  our  Ambassador,  and  very 
fond  of  you  as  our  friend.  Long  and  happy  life  to  you 
and  yours. 


THOMAS  B.  EEED 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE, 
NOVEMBEE  16,  1901 

I  SUPPOSE  that  I  have  been  called  upon  to-night 
because  I  am  really  the  only  person  who  can  exactly 
express  the  state  of  mind  that  we  all  have  with  regard 
to  Mr.  Choate.  I  suppose  that  I  alone  understand  the 
severe  nature  of  the  duties  which  devolve  upon  him  as 
Ambassador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James.  He  is  the  only 
diplomat  in  the  service  of  the  United  States  who  is 
required  to  learn  the  language  of  the  country  to  which 
he  is  accredited.  And  it  is  a  most  terrible  and  laborious 
task,  because  the  patois  which  he  brought  from  Stock- 
bridge  would  be  a  delusion  and  a  snare  instead  of  an 
aid  and  assistance. 

He  is,  therefore,  obliged  at  the  very  beginning  to 
learn  that  language,  otherwise  he  would  be  roaming 
around  in  the  railroad  stations  trying  to  buy  a  ticket 
when  he  ought  to  be  at  the  "  booking-office, "  and  in 
stead  of  stopping  over  from  his  train  he  would  be 
"breaking  his  journey,"  and  he  would  be  otherwise 
miscellaneously  misbehaving  himself,  as  I  understand 
that  in  that  country  an  annual  pass  and  a  statesman 
are  not  necessarily  companions.  He  has  to  understand 
that  a  man  in  order  to  be  clever  has  got  to  be  intellec- 

31 


32  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

tual;  he  has  also  to  learn  certain  phrases  and  formulae 
of  speech,  and  he  has  to  mention  that  we  have  a  com 
mon  Shakespeare,  though  why  he  should  be  called 
common  when  everybody  finds  him  uncommon,  I  never 
could  understand.  He  also,  unfortunately,  is  not  al 
lowed  to  say  that  we  have  a  common  Joseph  Miller— 
that  would  not  tend  to  increase,  absolutely  increase,  the 
intercourse  between  the  countries— not  so.  And,  con 
sequently,  he  has  to  be  original.  He  has  to  invent  meth 
ods  of  making  the  English  understand  some  portions 
of  the  deep  and  delightful  fun  which  underlies  the 
whole  American  character.  In  every  relation  of  life  he 
has  to  conform  himself  to  the  custom  and  fashions  of 
the  inhabitants,  and  that  has  some  points  of  difficulty. 

I  don't  think  you  realize  and  appreciate  the  differ 
ence  in  the  language  of  the  two  countries  which  I  have 
endeavored  to  picture  by  simple  suggestions.  I  had  an 
opportunity  to  see  it  in  full  force,  for  I  encountered  it 
the  first  time  I  went  to  the  United  States  Embassy  or 
Legation,  as  it  then  was,  in  London,  for  I  heard  a 
gentleman  in  pure  English  meeting  a  book-agent  and 
upsetting  him  completely,  and  I  felt  that  the  Ambas 
sador  of  that  period  had  this  man  there  for  the  purpose 
of  giving  every  American  who  came  there  a  plunge  into 
the  well  of  English,  pure  and  undefiled;  and  for  my 
part  I  have  never  forgotten  my  plunge. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  and  suggested  to-night 
about  our  relations  with  England.  There  has  been  no 
country  upon  the  face  of  the  earth  for  which  we  have 
felt  all  our  lives  the  tenderness  felt  for  England.  A 
young  Englishman  cannot  be  made  to  understand,  can 
not  by  any  possibility  understand,  the  deep  sensibility 


THOMAS  B.  REED  33 

which  every  American  of  English  origin  has  when  he 
sets  foot  upon  English  soil.  It  is  living  history.  No 
body  expressed  it  better  than  Hawthorne  when  he  gave 
the  title  to  his  book,  "The  Old  Home."  We  have  al 
ways  had  that  feeling  toward  Great  Britain;  we  have 
always  shown  it,  if  in  no  other  way,  by  the  character 
of  the  men  we  have  sent  there.  We  began  by  sending 
the  man  who  afterward  was  the  second  President  of  the 
United  States.  We  have  sent  men  of  such  fame  and 
distinction  that  there  is  no  body  of  statesmen  in  the 
United  States  that  can  by  any  possibility  be  compared 
with  the  men  who  have  represented  the  country  in 
England— poets,  orators,  Presidents ;  we  have  sent  men 
of  the  highest  distinction.  It  has  been  one  continuous 
testimonial  of  our  regard  and  affection  for  the  mother 
country.  And  if  at  last  they  understand  us,  I  am  glad 
of  it.  Not  because  I  want  our  people  to  conform  to 
their  ideas,  but  because  I  want  them  to  conform  to  the 
sentiments  and  views  of  our  people.  I  hope  that  the 
doctrine  which  the  Ambassador  is  promulgating  to-day, 
of  universal  suffrage  and  universal  liberty,  will  prevail, 
not  only  over  this  country  but  all  over  the  world. 

I  do  not  think  that  we  need  say  anything  in  praise  of 
ourselves;  and  I  think  it  is  not  in  the  least  necessary, 
because  our  works  do  our  praising,  our  works  release 
us  from  the  obligation  of  having  the  approval  of  any 
body  but  ourselves,  and  having  our  own,  we  don't 
need  the  others. 

I  can  remember  so  many  famous  names,  that  I  don't 
venture  to  inflict  them  upon  this  company.  Your  time 
is  passing  away,  and  I  shall  not  speak  of  all  the  great 
men.  Mr.  Carnegie  has  anticipated  me,  but  I  do  say 


34  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

that  with,  perfect  propriety  on  this  occasion,  we  may 
conclude  this  great  list  of  those  who  have  represented 
this  country  in  the  mother  country  with  the  name  of 
Mr.  Choate,  who  has  done  this  country  great  honor,  and 
who  is  the  honored  guest  of  this  evening. 


SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE, 
NOVEMBER  16,  1901 

MR.  CARNEGIE  suggested  that  on  the  other  side  of 
the  water  it  is  considered  necessary  to  train  men 
for  the  diplomatic  office,  and  he  also  suggested  that  on 
this  side  we  did  not  find  it  necessary  to  do  that,  but  had 
been  able  to  produce  ready-made  diplomats  when  occa 
sion  required;  and  I  have  waited,  and  I  have  listened, 
and  I  have  expected  to  hear  somebody  tell  an  anecdote 
which  has  not  been  told,  and  it  becomes  necessary  for  me 
to  tell  it.  You  have  heard  that  anecdote  many  times,  and 
you  will  hear  it  many  more  times,  but  you  have  never 
known,  perhaps,  its  historic  significance.  You  have 
never  known  how  much  was  bound  up  in  that  anecdote. 

The  greatness  of  this  country  rests  upon  two  anec 
dotes.  The  first  was  of  the  time  when  young  George 
Washington  told  his  father  about  the  little  hatchet, 
when  he  was  eight  years  of  age,  long  ago  in  1740 ;  and 
that  anecdote  produced  one  of  the  foundations  upon 
which  the  greatness  of  America  rests,  the  foundation  of 
true  speaking,  which  is  a  characteristic  of  the  nation. 

And  then  the  other  one.  The  other  anecdote,  which, 
as  I  shall  show  you,  produced  the  other  great  feature 
of  this  country,  that  is,  the  prosperity,  the  material 

35 


36  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

prosperity  of  this  country,  which  dates  from  so  short  a 
time  back— the  largest  portion  of  it  underlies  that 
anecdote.  I  refer  to  a  time  when  His  Excellency,  the 
guest  of  the  evening,  was  engaged  in  a  lawsuit,  and  he 
had  as  his  pal  a  Hebrew  lawyer  of  great  ability,  and  in 
the  process  of  skinning  the  client,  or,  rather,  when  it 
was  over,  when  they  had  won  the  suit  or  lost  it,  they 
did  n't  know  which,  they  were  not  particular,  the  main 
thing  was  to  come  yet,  and  that  was  to  collect  a  bill  for 
their  services  in  skinning  the  man— services  is  the  term 
used  by  that  craft  to  signify  the  kind  of  function  which 
they  perform,  a  diplomatic  expression  for  things 
diplomatic  in  their  nature— and  the  Hebrew  lawyer, 
Mr.  Choate's  co-respondent,  proposed  to  make  out  the 
bill,  and  he  did.  He  made  out  a  bill  for  $500  for  these 
services,  so-called,  and  submitted  it  to  his  confederate 
for  his  criticism ;  and  Mr.  Choate  said :  * '  Perhaps  I  had 
better  attend  to  that  myself."  And  the  next  day  Mr. 
Choate  made  out  a  bill  and  collected  it,  and  handed  to 
this  friend  of  his  $5000,  and  said:  "That  is  your  half 
of  the  loot."  And  this  simple  little  Hebrew  was  pro 
foundly  touched  and  he  said,  looking  up  with  deep  rev 
erence  :  "Almost  thou  persuadest  me  to  be  a  Christian. ' ' 
Now,  many  laughed,  which  was  right;  but  the  deep 
thinkers  did  n't  merely  laugh;  they  stopped  to  think, 
and  they  said :  '  *  There,  that  is  a  rising  man.  That  man 
has  in  him  qualities  which  deserve  high  place ;  that  man 
must  be  rescued  from  the  law  and  consecrated  to  di 
plomacy."  For  they  said,  "When  a  man  has  the 
capacity  to  take  care  of  his  private  advantage  like  that, 
when  he  has  this  quality  in  such  generous  measure, 
then  he  only  needs  spreading  it,  and  in  this  case  there 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  37 

seems  to  be  enough  to  spread  out,  and  it  can  cover  and 
take  care  of  the  advantages  of  the  world ;  the  commer 
cial  advantages  of  a  great  nation  will  not  suffer  in  that 
man's  keeping.7'  They  kept  their  eyes  upon  that  ris 
ing  man,  and  the  time  came  when  they  said,  "We  re 
quire  a  man,  now  that  America  has  grown  so  great,  with 
perhaps  seventy  or  eighty  millions  of  people,  we  re 
quire  a  man  now  not  to  take  care  of  the  moral  character 
of  America  before  the  world,  for  Washington  and  his 
anecdote  have  done  that ;  we  require  a  man  to  take  care 
of  her  commercial  well-being."  They  saw  with  their 
prophetic  eyes  the  significance  of  that  anecdote;  they 
foresaw  that  out  of  that  would  grow  commercial  pros 
perity  for  this  country  by  that  quality  so  ripe  and 
complete,  which  would  last  down,  down,  down  the  cen 
turies,  until  this  country's  prosperity  has  attained  its 
summit,  and  has  been  so  firmly  established  upon  eternal 
foundations,  and  so  it  has  proved.  Mr.  Choate  has 
carried  that  quality  with  him  to  England.  And  as  Mr. 
Carnegie  says,  he  has  worked  like  a  mole,  underground. 
We  say  that  the  mole  has  been  doing  great  and  good 
service.  He  tried  himself  to  tell  you  what  he  did  there. 
He  started  to,  three  or  four  times,  but  did  n't  reveal 
anything  except  the  reason  that  brought  him  to  this 
country.  As  to  his  services  over  there,  that  they  have 
been  more  than  merely  suggestive,  we  know,  for  he  has 
been  there  only  three  years,  and  now  you  see  the  results. 
Why,  American  railroad  iron  is  so  cheap  in  England, 
that  the  poorest  families  can  have  it  for  breakfast. 

He  has  so  tickled  those  ministers,  that  cabinet  of 
England,  when  he  has  seemed  to  be  spending  these 
week-ends,  as  they  call  it  over  there,  referred  to  here 


38  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

to-night;  when  he  has  been  simply  socially  conversing, 
perhaps,  he  has  been  really  pushing  canal  schemes  and 
working  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  successfully  spreading 
the  commerce  of  this  country  for  these  three  years,  and 
now  you  know  the  result.  Foreign  commerce  with  the 
United  States  has  augmented  by  tenfold,  twenty  and 
thirtyfold  even;  and  he  has  depressed  English  com 
merce  in  the  same  ratio.  Brethren,  the  principle  under 
lying  the  anecdote  of  the  lawyer  and  the  principle  of 
the  man,  was  the  principle  which  guided  his  course,  and 
that  principle  was  the  principle  of  give  and  take ;  that 
is  diplomacy— give  one  and  take  ten. 

As  a  result,  we  have  in  the  one  anecdote  the  character 
of  this  nation  for  truth,  for  veracity,  for  absolute  trust 
worthiness  when  a  man  speaks,  established  upon  ever 
lasting  foundations ;  that  is  the  moral  character  of  the 
country— no  one  can  budge  it  while  that  anecdote  of 
Washington  and  his  hatchet  lasts.  And  Mr.  Choate 
has  placed  the  country  upon  the  same  perpetual  foun 
dation  or  substratum  by  the  principle  involved  in  that 
other  anecdote. 

And  as  long  as  this  club  shall  swing  amongst  the 
other  stars  and  constellations  and  what-not  that  make 
night  beautiful,  so  long  as  they  shall  last,  this  country's 
moral  character  is  safe  on  the  one  foundation,  and  its 
commercial  prosperity  is  safe  on  the  other.  We  owe 
to  Mr.  Choate  a  vast  debt  of  gratitude  for  what  he  has 
done  in  England.  This  whole  nation  owes  him  a  vast 
debt  of  gratitude.  Let  us  with  all  our  hearts  strengthen 
his  hands,  and  in  all  sincerity  thank  him,  do  our  share 
in  thanking  him,  and  paying  our  share  of  the  great 
debt,  right  here  and  now. 


EDWARD  PATTERSON 

(JUSTICE  OF  THE  NEW  YORK  SUPREME  COURT) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE, 
NOVEMBER  16,  1901 

IT  has  been  my  good  fortune  on  several  occasions  to 
experience  the  hospitality  of  this  club  when  it  has 
extended  that  hospitality  to  gentlemen  of  distinction  in 
the  arts,  science,  in  professional  life,  and  in  the  public 
service.  But  I  never  have  attended  one  of  these  ban 
quets  under  more  gratifying  circumstances.  First,  I 
am  enabled  to  see  again  the  face  and  hear  the  voice  of  a 
very  old  friend,  one  who  on  occasions  of  this  character 
has  always  set  the  table  in  a  roar,  and  has  sent  us  home 
much  happier  and  more  light-hearted  than  we  came. 

If  I  were  to  speak  in  all  sincerity  and  in  the  ample 
measure  of  the  appreciation  in  which  Mr.  Choate  is  held 
by  the  bench  and  bar,  I  am  afraid  I  should  cause  that 
which  I  am  sure  no  act  of  his  own  life  has  ever  caused, 
that  is,  bring  a  blush  to  his  cheeks.  Mr.  Choate  oc 
cupied  a  unique  place  at  the  bar  of  this  community. 
There  are  other  great  advocates,  and  other  great  law 
yers,  but  there  is  none  who  precisely  fills  here  the  place 
that  he  occupied,  and  it  was  a  little  of  a  surprise  to  us 
that  occupying  that  place  he  should  have  left  the  rich 
fields  of  jurisprudence  to  go  and  batten  on  the  desert 

39 


40  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

meadows  of  diplomacy.  I  could  not  understand  why 
that  was,  until  I  heard  him  announce  his  reason  to 
night,  and  that  is,  that  he  went  abroad  for  the  purpose 
of  getting  a  new  perspective  of  American  institutions 
and  society  from  a  distance.  These  institutions  have 
impressed  him  more  at  a  distance,  probably,  than  they 
do  at  home,  and  he  has  returned  with  the  same  feeling 
of  attachment  and  loyalty  to  them  with  which  he  left  us. 
I  regret  very  much  that  the  presiding  justice  of  our 
court,  your  honored  fellow-member  Mr.  Justice  Van 
Brunt,  is  not  here  this  evening  for  the  purpose  of  pay 
ing  his  respects  to  Mr.  Choate.  There  is  an  outstanding 
account  between  them  unsettled,  in  the  keen  encounter 
of  wit  which  has  taken  place  between  them.  I  think  if 
he  were  here  to-night  that  account  might  be  settled.  I 
am  not  connected  with  it  in  any  way,  and  therefore  am 
not  called  upon  to  say  anything  in  that  connection ;  but 
there  are  certain  anecdotes  with  reference  to  Mr. 
Choate  and  the  court  which,  perhaps,  are  not  known  to 
the  majority  of  the  gentlemen  present  here  to-night. 
It  is  known  to  all  of  you  that  Mr.  Choate  is  exceedingly 
vivid  in  the  presentation  of  his  cases  in  every  way.  On 
one  occasion,  in  a  court  which  was  composed  of  gentle 
men  none  of  whom  are  now  members  of  the  bench, 
it  seems  that  certain  of  the  judges  were  interested 
somewhat  in  speculations  in  Wall  Street,  and  while 
they  were  upon  the  bench  hearing  a  case  in  which 
Mr.  Choate  was  counsel,  one  of  the  attendants  was 
engaged  in  the  business  of  bringing  up  little  strips 
from  the  telegraph-ticker,  and  the  quotations  were 
rather  startling  to  the  gentlemen  on  the  bench.  The 
attention  which  the  importance  of  the  case  and  the 


EDWARD  PATTERSON  41 

character  of  the  advocate  required  was  not  given,  and 
it  seemed  annoying  to  the  orator ;  and  after  some  delay, 
in  an  endeavor  to  arouse  the  attention  of  the  court, 
he  said  that  he  knew  it  was  exceedingly  difficult  for  the 
members  of  the  court  to  give  close  attention  to  what 
he  was  saying,  on  a  falling  market. 

On  another  occasion  the  honored  guest  of  the  evening 
was  engaged  in  the  argument  of  a  very  important  case, 
but  in  the  earlier  stages  of  it  he  did  n't  seem  familiar 
with  the  subject-matter  of  his  case.  The  supposition 
was  that  perhaps  he  had  not  looked  at  his  papers  until 
he  had  entered  the  court-room.  After  laboring  for 
some  three  quarters  of  an  hour  in  an  endeavor  to  pick 
up  the  thread  of  the  case,  he  made  an  application  to  the 
court  for  an  extension  of  his  time,  which  was  very 
reluctantly  granted.  As  soon  as  the  extension  was 
granted,  the  wily  gentleman  seemed  to  strike  the  pace 
and  the  subject-matter  of  the  case  returned  to  him,  and 
during  another  half-hour  or  three  quarters  he  made  a 
most  effective  and  convincing  argument,  which  he 
closed  in  this  manner : 

"I  thank  Your  Honor,"  addressing  the  presiding 
justice,  ''for  the  very  unusual  courtesy  you  have  ex 
tended  to  me.  I  trust  that  through  your  courteous 
compliance  with  my  desire,  I  have  not  added  much  to 
Your  Honor's  too  well-compensated  labors." 

Now,  Mr.  Chairman,  we  miss  very  much  from  the 
courts  our  friend  Mr.  Choate.  Some  remark  is  made 
from  time  to  time  with  reference  to  the  changes  that 
have  taken  place  in  the  methods  of  the  transaction  of 
business  in  the  courts.  While  Mr.  Choate  was  with  us, 
all  his  arguments  were  illuminated  by  the  spirit  of  fun 


42  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

and  humor,  very  decorous,  very  appropriate,  and  al 
ways  exceedingly  interesting.  The  dullest  subject  was 
lit  up  with  the  charm  of  his  mind,  and,  of  course,  we 
therefore  miss  him  very  much  from  the  courts.  His 
place  in  the  profession  is  known  to  everybody,  and  it 
would  be  impossible  for  me  to  stand  here  without  some 
embarrassment  and  offer  to  add  to  the  incense  of  his 
praise,  which  all  the  lawyers  are  very  willing  to  do. 
We  miss  him;  we  miss  him  from  the  courts;  we  miss 
him  in  our  daily  lives;  and  we  miss  most  of  all  his 
companionship.  Great  lawyers  there  are  in  the  city; 
great  advocates  there  are  here  in  this  club.  There  is 
none  whose  hand-grasp  is  a  more  cordial  one,  or  to 
whom  our  hearts  go  out  with  a  warmer  affection  than 
Mr.  Choate.  We  do  miss  him,  because  he  has  repre 
sented  to  us  those  qualities  which  constitute  what  you 
have  described  to  be  the  requirements  for  membership 
in  this  club— merit  and  good  fellowship. 


MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN 

(JUSTICE  OF  THE  NEW  YORK  SUPREME  COURT) 
AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  DECEMBEE  21,  1901 

I  AM  deeply  moved  by  this  touching  reception,  and 
by  the  very  complimentary  manner  in  which  I  have 
been  introduced  to  you.  But  I  must  take  exception  to 
one  or  two  statements  made,  because  if  I  sat  or  stood 
here  silent,  and  allowed  them,  to  go  unchallenged,  I 
should  be  regarded  as  having  concurred  in  their  ac 
curacy.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  did  not  receive  the 
nominations  of  all  parties— the  Prohibition  party  re 
fused  me  the  nomination,  and  that  was  due  entirely  to 
the  fact  that  on  an  occasion  when  by  some  accident 
one  of  that  party  got  entrance  to  this  house,  I  was 
dining  with  your  president,  the  officers,  and  some  dis 
tinguished  colleagues— and  the  result  of  that  evening 
lost  me  the  Prohibition  vote. 

It  would  be  a  very  difficult  thing,  were  I  gifted  with 
oratory,  to  make  a  suitable  acknowledgment  of  the  very 
handsome  and  complimentary  speech  which  has  just 
been  made  by  your  president,  and  this  difficulty  is 
accentuated  by  the  fact  that  to  some  extent  I  must 
speak  of  myself  and  my  own  work;  and  yet  there  is 
something  in  the  character  of  this  compliment  which 
is  so  intensely  gratifying  that  I  should  be  devoid  of 

43 


44  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

sentiment  and  emotion  if  I  were  not  deeply  touched 
and  moved.  I  remember  my  entrance  originally  into 
this  club  and  all  its  associations,  and  I  have  to-night 
received  more  than  a  reward  for  all  I  have  ever  done 
or  had  to  do  with  the  club.  I  have  sought  some  explana 
tion  for  this  gathering,  and  when  I  remember  that  the 
Lotos  Club  has  been  noted  for  its  receptions  to  distin 
guished  men,  that  thought  has  added  to  my  embarrass 
ment.  But  I  will  not  dwell  further  on  this  feature, 
because  no  matter  how  much  I  disparage  my  own  merits 
or  work,  it  would  be  a  sorry  acknowledgment  indeed  if 
I  could  not  find  some  reason  for  this  splendid  assem 
blage.  No  doubt  it  is  due  in  part  to  the  good  fellowship 
that  is  so  distinctive  a  characteristic  of  the  club.  But 
that  only  slightly  explains  it.  It  has  been  explained  by 
the  sentiment  voiced  by  your  president  in  expressing 
the  respect  and  veneration  of  all  the  members  of  the 
club  for  the  judiciary,  and  which  is  enjoyed  by  my 
distinguished  colleagues  here  to-night. 

These  men  have  been  my  co-laborers  in  office,  and  they 
are  entitled  to  share  with  me  all  the  respect  which  is 
paid  to  their  great  office.  On  my  own  behalf,  and  on 
theirs,  I  acknowledge  to  you  the  privilege  which  you 
have  given  us  to-night,  of  thanking  you,  and,  through 
you,  the  people,  for  the  respect  which  they  have  shown 
to  our  judiciary. 

Fourteen  years  ago,  when  comparatively  unknown,  I 
was  made  a  guest  of  this  club.  I  felt  then,  as  I  do  now, 
the  responsibilities  of  the  great  office  to  which  I  had 
then  been  newly  chosen.  But  when  I  to-night  think 
upon  the  results  of  the  last  election,  and  the  cordiality 
with  which  you  have  received  me,  I  have  the  right  to 


MORGAN  J.   O'BRIEN  45 

feel  that  you  have,  and  the  people  have,  in  no  uncertain 
voice,  spoken  of  my  services  as  having  been  acceptably 
done.  And  that  is  all  the  reward  that  any  right-think 
ing  man  should  ask  for— to  earn  the  confidence  and 
respect  of  his  fellow-citizens.  But  when  to  this  is 
added  the  fact  which  has  been  alluded  to,  that  I  was 
made  the  nominee  of  all  the  great  political  parties, 
that  is  a  reward  which  comes  to  but  few  men  in  a  life 
time,  a  reward  which  I  justly  prize,  and  a  priceless 
heritage  which  I  trust  I  may  transmit  untarnished  to 
my  latest  posterity. 

During  the  fourteen  years  of  my  incumbency  of 
office,  we  have  had  many  great  and  important  changes 
Not  only  in  the  enlargement  of  our  city  and  the  exten 
sion  of  our  national  domain,  but  by  the  pressure  of 
those  great  legal,  social,  and  economic  questions  which 
make  the  duties  of  a  judge  more  onerous  and  respon 
sible.  And  if  you  were  to  ask  me  in  the  future  how 
those  responsibilities  will  be  met,  I  can  but  point  to  the 
career  and  to  the  record  of  the  judges  in  the  past.  I 
can  but  refer  to  the  history  of  our  country,  whose  every 
page  teems  with  a  tribute  to  the  integrity,  patriotism, 
zeal,  and  industry  of  the  judges  of  the  past.  As  these 
great  questions  are  presented,  there  will  be  men  found 
to  meet  the  responsibility.  In  a  country  such  as  ours, 
growing  as  it  is  with  a  marvelous  development  in  all 
directions,  having  reached  the  very  height  of  economic 
triumphs,  leading  as  we  do  all  the  nations  of  the  earth 
in  science  and  inventiveness,  having  taken  our  place 
and  challenged  the  preeminence  of  the  historic  coun 
tries  of  the  Old  World— although  we  have  the  advan 
tage  of  this  phenomenal  development  and  progress,  and 


46  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

although  we  have  enormous  wealth,  not  only  national, 
but  in  individuals;  beneath  the  shadow  of  this  great 
prosperity  we  have  had  misery  increasing.  Whilst  we 
have  had  men  whose  fortunes  run  up  into  the  hundreds 
of  millions,  corporations  striding  the  continent,  we  have 
had  many  who  have  been  deprived  of  the  benefits  of 
civilization  and  religion,  and  who  are  entitled  to  share, 
as  we  all  hope  to  see  them  do,  in  the  blessings  which 
our  country  so  magnificently  holds  out  to  all. 

Although,  therefore,  we  have  made  great  progress, 
there  are  many  questions  remaining  to  be  solved.  And 
when  it  comes  to  interposing  a  power  which  shall  stand 
between  the  unlawful  encroachments  of  concentrated 
wealth,  or  that  shall  attempt  to  stay  the  fury  of  a  mob, 
the  courts  can  always  be  depended  on  so  long  as  they 
are  supported  by  the  people. 

The  power  and  the  authority  which  they  wield  they 
will  possess  so  long  as  they  enjoy  the  confidence  of  the 
people.  There  are  but  two  powers  of  government.  One 
is  the  power  of  the  sword,  supported  by  the  hand  that 
wields  it;  and  the  other  is  the  power  of  the  law,  sup 
ported  by  an  enlightened  public  conscience.  The  life 
of  a  nation,  like  the  life  of  a  man,  may  be  prolonged  in 
happiness  to  the  end  of  its  day,  or  it  may  perish  the 
victim  of  internal  dissension.  We  know  that  of  the 
great  governments  and  great  republics  of  the  past, 
some  of  them,  having  territory  exceeding  our  own,  have 
glistened  in  their  day  and  then  faded  out  as  utterly  as 
the  vivid  glories  of  sunset.  If  we  would  preserve  the 
government  which  we  received  from  our  fathers,  a 
government  which  has  been  so  constituted  as  to  give 
the  highest  individual  life,  individual  liberty,  liberty  of 


MOEGAN  J.   O'BRIEN  47 

opinion,  and  equality  and  right,  in  unsullied  dignity 
and  power,  it  becomes  us  at  all  times  to  remember  that 
we  must  stand  by  those  civic  virtues,  that  regard  for 
what  is  right,  for  what  is  just,  and  for  what  is  true,  if 
we  would  perpetuate  untarnished  that  which  we  re 
ceived  from  our  fathers. 

Gentlemen,  it  has  been  said  by  a  great  lawyer,  and  I 
can  do  nothing  better  than  to  quote  his  words : 

Justice,  sir,  is  the  greatest  interest  of  man  on  earth.  It  is 
the  ligament  which  holds  civilized  beings  and  nations  to 
gether.  Wherever  her  temple  stands,  and  so  long  as  it  is 
duly  honored,  there  is  foundation  for  social  security,  general 
happiness,  and  the  improvement  and  progress  of  our  race. 
And  whoever  labors  on  this  edifice  with  usefulness  and  dis 
tinction — whoever  clears  its  foundations,  strengthens  its 
pillars,  adorns  its  entablatures,  or  contributes  to  raise  its 
august  dome  still  higher  to  the  skies,  connects  himself  in  name 
and  fame  with  that  which  is  and  must  be  as  durable  as  the 
frame  of  human  society. 


THOMAS  B.  SLICEE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  MOEGAN  J.  O'BRIEN, 
DECEMBER  21,  1901 

I  AM  most  happy^  to  take  part  in  this  gentle  vivisec 
tion,  in  which  the  subject  is  guaranteed  to  be  alive 
after  the  process.  I  am  not  here  in  my  ministerial 
capacity  to  gather  up  the  remains  for  disposition  ac 
cording  to  the  order  of  my  own  church.  And  not  alone 
because  I  have  a  very  grave  opinion  that  the  subject 
himself  would  object  to  the  functions  of  that  particular 
church. 

Dr.  Mackay  told  me  a  story  the  other  night  at  the 
Bankers'  Dinner.  It  was  of  a  Scotchman  who  objected 
to  the  length  of  his  minister's  sermons.  The  minister 
said  to  him :  * '  You  should  n  't  say  that,  Sandy ;  you  '11 
soon  be  where  you  '11  hear  no  sermons,  long  or  short." 

"Weel,"  was  the  retort,  "  't  will  nae  be  for  want  of 
meenisters. ' ' 

Well,  gentlemen,  I  am  no  judge — yet  some  two  years 
ago  I  felt  as  if  I  might  make  the  intimate  acquaintance 
of  the  judiciary.  I  was  threatened  with  indictment  by 
various  persons,  and  I  proposed  to  go  entirely  through 
the  courts,  from  the  Magistrate's  Court  through  to  the 
Appellate  Division  and  the  Court  of  Appeals ;  but  that 
danger  passed  as  all  funereal  occasions  do,  and  the 
mourners  still  go  about  the  streets. 

48 


THOMAS  R.   SLICER  49 

Now,  reference  has  been  made  to  the  fact  that  Justice 
O'Brien  was  upon  all  the  tickets  except  of  that  small 
coterie  who  keep  themselves  in  cold  storage  for  the 
preservation  of  their  immortal  souls.  I  wish  to  testify 
to  the  fact  that  having  been  a  part  from  the  beginning 
of  all  this  effort  to  produce  a  coalition  of  all  interests 
for  the  benefit  of  the  city  of  New  York  on  a  business 
administration,  that  there  was  one  matter  which  was 
disposed  of  instantly,  that  never  called  for  discussion 
or  question,  and  that  was  the  renomination  of  Mr. 
Justice  O'Brien.  It  was  a  foregone  conclusion  in  all 
of  the  conferences,  which  in  the  beginning  were  sup 
posed  to  be  a  galaxy  of  reformers,  and  ended  in  being 
a  great  popular  uprising. 

Now,  while  on  the  subject  of  reform,  I  wish  to  set 
myself  right  before  the  " court,"  and  before  these 
gentlemen,  many  of  whom  are  lawyers.  I  have  been 
constantly  referred  to  as  a  "reformer."  I  am  not.  I 
belong  to  a  small  group  of  people  in  the  city  of  New 
York  who  make  political  scrap-iron  into  bar  steel.  And 
it  is  not  the  professional  reformer  to  whom  Judge 
Hatch  has  referred.  The  professional  reformer  has  had 
no  share  in  this  great  occasion  of  which  Judge  0  'Brien 
has  been  the  ornament  and  undisputed  element  in  the 
controversy— the  professional  reformer  may  be  defined 
—only  excluding  myself  from  the  class— the  profes 
sional  reformer  is  a  man  who  rides  a  nightmare  while 
he  sleeps  and  forgets  to  get  off  when  he  wakes  up.  He 
is  in  the  condition  of  the  man  in  the  insane  asylum — 
they  are  not  all  in  the  insane  asylum— who  was  found 
by  a  visitor  astride  a  small  table  which  he  was  whip 
ping.  The  visitor  said :  ' '  That  is  a  fine  horse  you  have 


50  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

there."  The  lunatic  looked  at  him  pityingly,  and  re 
plied  : '  *  This  is  not  a  horse,  this  is  a  hobby. ' '  And  then 
the  visitor  said  to  him :  ''What  is  the  difference  between 
a  horse  and  a  hobby  ? ' '  The  lunatic  smiled  knowingly, 
and  said :  ' '  You  can  get  off  a  horse. ' ' 

And  that  brings  us  back  to  the  difficulty  connected 
with  the  Prohibition  party.  I  should  advise  Judge 
O'Brien  and  any  other  persons  who  come  up  for  re- 
nomination  not  to  distress  themselves.  These  things 
take  care  of  themselves.  I  received  a  paper  from  one 
of  the  adjoining  States  a  little  while  ago  which  scored 
me  for  saying  that  a  half -closed  Sunday  is  better  than 
a  Sunday  open  all  day,  as  we  have  it  now.  This  paper, 
edited  by  a  minister  who  was  a  candidate  for  the  office 
of  governor  of  that  State  upon  the  Prohibition  ticket, 
contained  an  editorial  which  hit  at  me  personally.  It 
was  headed,  "The  unworthy  son  of  a  distinguished 
sire."  It  was  rhythmic  and  touching.  I  read  the 
editorial  and  showed  it  to  my  family,  who  read  the 
comic  papers.  And  then  I  laid  it  carefully  away  in 
my  scrap-basket,  determined,  as  usual,  not  to  answer 
appeals  of  the  kind.  And  not  two  weeks  ago  that  gen 
tleman  was  suspended  from  the  ministry  for  the  alleged 
improper  use  of  funds,  by  the  conference  of  which  he 
was  a  member.  These  things  correct  themselves. 

I  occupy  the  singular  position  of  being  the  only  min 
ister  present,  and  without  fear ;  there  are  no  conditions 
of  civic  administration  that  lead  me  to  have  any  fear 
as  to  the  probability  of  indictment  for  at  least  two 
years,  and  no  one  more  than  myself  hopes  to  benefit  by 
the  splendid  administration  which  Judge  O'Brien  will 


THOMAS  R,   SLICER  51 

repeat  after  the  record  of  his  years  in  office  and  his 
distinguished  service.  I  want  to  say  a  serious  word. 
A  great  preacher  was  once  taken  to  task  for  what  he 
said  in  the  pulpit,  and  replied :  ' '  You  'd  thank  God  if 
you  knew  what  I  did  n't  say."  That  is  my  condition 
exactly. 

The  serious  word  I  want  to  say  is  this:  my  office 
brings  me,  not  by  way  of  amusement,  but  because  I  am, 
I  hope,  dedicated  to  the  common  life,  in  connection 
with  and  associated  with  a  great  body  of  people,  of 
rough  and  discontented  people  in  this  city.  They  are 
people  of  the  working  classes.  In  the  single  social  set 
tlement  which  is  connected  with  my  church  and  never 
appears  as  a  church,  we  know  personally  1200  fami 
lies,  and  have  several  hundred  children  in  classes  and 
clubs  weekly  there.  I  can  assure  the  gentlemen  of  the 
judiciary  that  are  here,  that  there  is  an  anxious  look 
toward  them  upon  the  part  of  these  people,  not  because 
they  doubt  their  integrity  or  justice,  but  because  they 
depend  upon  their  integrity  and  justice.  Nothing  but 
the  judiciary  and  the  law's  strength,  as  you  know  so 
well,  stands  between  the  poor  man  and  the  injustice 
which  he  constantly  fears ;  and  the  great  hope  of  justice 
in  this  city  for  all  that  seething  mass  of  people  who 
never  hear  an  English  word,  is  based  on  the  confidence 
that  they  hold  toward  the  judiciary  of  New  York  City 
and  State. 

"Reason  is  no  match  for  superstition,"  and  it  rests 
with  the  judiciary  to  illustrate  to  them  the  fact  that 
here  is  the  shadow  of  the  great  rock ;  here  is  the  thing 
against  which  the  current  of  their  discontent  may  turn 


52  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

itself  aside,  until  it  finds  the  realization  of  their  hopes. 
I  say  this  merely  for  my  humbler  brethren  that  depend 
upon  the  people  who  stand  to  them,  not  simply  as  the 
interpreters  of  the  law,  but  for  the  law  itself  in  their 
own  lives. 


DAVID  B.  HILL 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN, 
DECEMBER  21,  1901 

FT!  HIS  is  the  second  time  that  I  have  had  the  honor 
JL  and  the  pleasure  of  being  with  you  on  one  of  these 
festive  occasions.  The  first  was  to  pay  my  tribute  of 
respect  to  that  distinguished  gentleman  who  honors  the 
State  of  New  York  in  the  Senate  of  the  United  States, 
and  who  is  now  on  a  joyful  mission  abroad.  I  met  him 
the  other  day  in  the  street,  and  tendered  my  congratu 
lations  on  the  approaching  happy  event ;  and  he  looked 
me  in  the  eye,  and  said:  "You  congratulate  me?"  I 
said:  "Yes,  I  suppose,  Mr.  Depew,  you  think  that 
strange,  coming  from  a  confirmed  old  bachelor  like 
myself.  It  reminds  me  of  the  story  of  the  minister  who, 
in  the  pulpit,  preached  against  the  use  of  tobacco,  and 
then  afterward  walked  down  the  aisle  and  proceeded  to 
take  from  his  pocket  a  quid  of  tobacco  and  put  it  in  his 
mouth,  because  ministers  don't  always  follow  their  own 
preaching,  and  when  remonstrated  with  for  the  seeming 
inconsistency,  said:  'People  must  do  as  I  advise  them, 
and  not  as  I  do  myself. '  ' ' 

And  so  I  gave  that  advice  to  Mr.  Depew. 

I  am  glad  to  be  present  on  this  occasion,  because  I 
have  known  the  distinguished  guest  of  the  evening  for 

53 


54  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

a  long  number  of  years.  He  should  be  a  happy  man 
to-night,  surrounded  by  his  associates  of  the  Appellate 
Division,  which  he  honors  by  his  presence,  with  the 
representatives  of  the  judges  of  the  highest  court  of 
our  State,  by  a  gathering  of  his  fellow-members  of  the 
bar,  and  of  the  members  of  this  club.  He  is  a  most 
fortunate  man  indeed,  and  his  cup  of  happiness  should 
be  full.  Many  of  us  might  well  envy  him.  And  in 
addition  to  that,  he  has  a  most  splendid  wife  and  ten 
children.  Well,  some,  like  myself,  have  no  wife,  and 
no  children  to  speak  of. 

Since  I  last  addressed  you  there  has  been  some 
unpleasantness  here  in  this  great  city  of  yours.  Judge 
O'Brien  was  indorsed  by  all  parties,  because,  I  as 
sume,  his  nomination  was  conspicuously  fit;  and  his 
election  represents  the  principle  of  the  survival  of  the 
fittest.  Some  fell  by  the  wayside  in  the  recent  contest. 
A  gentleman  met  me  the  other  day,  and,  speaking  of 
the  result,  began  to  praise  it.  I  was  careful  in  my 
utterances  in  regard  to  that  matter,  and  he  proceeded 
to  tell  me  a  story. 

There  was  a  funeral  procession  once  going  up  the 
street,  and  a  gentleman  asked  who  was  dead.  They 
said,  a  certain  individual.  "What  was  the  complaint?" 
was  the  next  question;  and  the  answer  was,  "There  is 
no  complaint ;  everybody  is  satisfied. ' ' 

"Touchin*  on  and  appertainin'  to"  the  subject  of 
the  judiciary,  permit  me  to  say  right  here  that  Judge 
O'Brien's  nomination  and  election  are  not  only  grati 
fying  to  the  citizens  of  this  city,  but,  I  think,  gratifying 
to  the  bar  of  the  State.  It  may  not  mark  an  epoch  in 
the  political  or  judicial  history  of  the  State ;  but  it  cer- 


DAVID  B.  HILL  55 

tainly  is  a  most  important  event.  It  is  not  necessary 
upon  this  occasion  for  me  to  speak  upon  or  to  em 
phasize  the  point  that  the  judiciary,  an  honest,  incor 
ruptible,  independent  judiciary,  is  the  safety  of  the 
State.  John  Marshall,  as  early  as  in  the  Virginia  con 
vention  of  1829,  said  that  the  greatest  injury  that  could 
be  inflicted  upon  a  free  people  was  a  degraded  or 
ignorant  or  a  dependent  judiciary. 

This  is  not  the  only  instance,  however,  in  the  history 
of  the  State  when  both  parties  have  risen  to  the  occa 
sion  and  nominated  for  high  judicial  positions  men 
without  regard  to  their  political  opinions.  Gentlemen 
cannot  have  forgotten,  who  are  familiar  with  the  his 
tory  of  this  State,  the  fact  that  in  1890  the  organiza 
tions  of  the  two  great  parties  of  this  State,  represented 
by  their  State  Committees,  indorsed  the  nomination  of 
Robert  Earl  for  chief  judge  of  the  Court  of  Appeals 
of  this  State,  and  he  was  unanimously  elected.  That 
subsequently,  in  1892,  the  same  organizations,  some 
times  called  by  our  friends  the  machines  of  the  two 
parties,  met,  and  although  there  was  some  opposition 
and  some  criticism,  both  nominated  Charles  Andrews 
for  chief  justice  of  the  Court  of  Appeals  of  this  State, 
and  he  was  unanimously  elected.  And  I  desire  to  say 
to-night  that  this  result  in  both  instances  was  largely 
brought  about  through  the  influence  of  one  of  the  great 
political  leaders  of  this  city,  whom  Mr.  Choate,  instead 
of  speaking  of  as  a  boss,  spoke  of  as  one  of  the  great 
leaders  of  the  Republican  party. 


FBEDERICK  FUNSTON 

(BRIGADIER-GENERAL,  UNITED  STATES  ARMY) 
AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  MARCH  8,  1902 

JUDGING  from  the  remarks  of  the  president  of  the 
Lotos  Club,  I  suppose  that  I  am  to  talk  about  the 
Philippines.  I  am  glad  of  the  opportunity  to  lay  be 
fore  such  a  company  a  few  facts.  You  will  take  into 
consideration  that  I  am  not  a  public  speaker.  A  man 
could  not,  by  knocking  around  the  world  for  fifteen  or 
twenty  years,  acquire  many  graces  as  a  speaker ;  but  I 
will  give  you  a  few  truthful  statements,  and  ask  you  to 
draw  your  own  conclusions. 

When  the  city  of  Manila  was  surrendered  to  the 
Navy  under  Admiral  Dewey  and  to  the  Army  under 
General  Merritt,  there  were  in  the  city  some  hundreds 
of  Spanish  families,  men,  women,  and  children,  and  a 
great  many  thousands  of  Spanish  soldiers  who  were 
prisoners  of  war  in  the  hands  of  our  troops. 

These  people,  absolutely  unarmed  and  helpless,  were 
dependent  entirely  upon  us  for  protection.  There  were 
also  many  European  residents:  German  and  British 
merchants,  with  their  families;  proprietors  of  banks, 
commercial  houses,  warehouses,  railroads,  representing 
millions  upon  millions  of  dollars'  worth  of  property. 

To  have  turned  these  helpless  Spaniards  and  others 
56 


FREDEKICK  FUNSTON  57 

over  to  the  mercy  of  the  uncontrollable  mob  which 
constituted  the  army  of  Aguinaldo  would  have  been  a 
positive  crime.  The  Bulgarian  and  Armenian  mas 
sacres  would  have  been  repeated  on  a  larger  scale,  and 
the  whole  thing  would  have  constituted  the  blackest 
page  in  American  history— a  thing  we  could  not  have 
blotted  out  in  a  thousand  years  of  repentance. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Aguinaldo  and  some  of 
the  other  higher  officers  would  have  countenanced  a 
massacre  of  the  helpless  Spaniards,  or  the  looting  of  the 
city  of  Manila,  but  there  is  no  possible  doubt  as  to  what 
would  have  happened.  The  thirty  thousand  armed 
men  who  constituted  his  force  would  have  been  abso 
lutely  beyond  control,  and  one  has  but  to  know  that 
pitiable  story  of  the  execution  of  two  hundred  helpless 
Spanish  soldiers  in  1899,  by  an  insurgent  major  in  the 
province  of  Albai,  in  order  to  realize  to  what  depths 
these  brutal  savages  could  go. 

No  joint  occupation  of  the  city  of  Manila  was  pos 
sible  ;  only  one  thing  could  be  done,  and  that  was  to  put 
the  insurgents,  bag  and  baggage,  clear  outside  of  the 
city,  and  make  them  stay  outside. 

Accordingly,  on  the  demand  of  the  American  au 
thorities,  the  insurgents  went  outside  the  city,  instead 
of  going  up  to  Malolos,  where  their  government  went. 
They  formed  a  line  of  trenches  running  parallel  with 
our  own  and  extending  from  the  sea  at  Maliban  on  one 
side  to  Peracuna  on  the  other.  They  filled  the  trenches 
with  twenty  or  thirty  thousand  armed  men,  so  that 
constant  vigilance  was  necessary  on  our  part. 

The  insurgents,  with  ribald  jests,  with  curses  and 
indecent  oaths  and  insults,  taunted  us  as  cowards,  and 


58  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

dared  our  men  to  open  fire;  but  stern  discipline  pre 
vailed  in  our  Army,  and  we  obeyed  the  instructions 
from  General  Otis  to  avoid  a  conflict  under  all  circum 
stances,  or  delay  it  as  long  as  was  possible;  day  after 
day  the  friction  became  more  intense,  and  nearly  all 
of  us,  I  think,  realized  that  it  was  not  a  question  of 
months,  but  a  question  of  a  few  days,  until  the  clash 
must  come. 

Finally  an  insurgent  captain  who  refused  to  respond 
to  the  challenge  of  a  sentry  on  the  streets  of  Manila 
was  shot  dead.  That  was  the  first  actual  clash.  About 
three  days  after  that,  a  private  soldier  of  the  First 
Montana  regiment,  who  was  on  sentry  duty  outside  the 
city,  was  approached  by  a  man  with  a  rifle  about  ten 
o'clock  at  night;  he  gave  the  usual  challenge;  the  man 
did  not  respond,  but,  instead,  fired  at  him  from  a  dis 
tance  of  a  very  few  yards,  but,  Filipino  like,  missed 
him.  Only  two  days  later  a  private  of  the  South 
Dakota  regiment  on  outpost  duty,  only  two  miles  north 
of  the  city,  was  approached  by  an  apparently  unarmed 
native,  who  asked  him  for  a  match.  The  sentry  started 
to  hand  him  one,  when  he  drew  a  bolo,  a  native  knife 
about  two  feet  long,  and  gave  him  a  terrible  blow  across 
the  face,  cutting  him  from  the  top  of  the  skull  down  to 
the  chin.  I  am  glad  to  say  that  within  about  half  a 
second  the  native  fell  dead,  shot  through  the  heart. 

A  few  days  later  a  drunken  mob  of  Filipinos,  partly 
officers  and  partly  soldiers  of  Aguinaldo's  army,  at 
tempted  to  rush  through  the  lines  of  the  First  Nebraska 
near  Santa  Casa ;  only  the  presence  of  Colonel  Stearns, 
that  magnificent  soldier  who  fell  at  Gang  Co,  prevented 
the  fight  from  opening  at  the  time.  He  had  a  great  deal 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  59 

of  influence  over  the  natives  and  over  his  own  men, 
and  he  induced  them  to  retire. 

Three  days  later  an  insurgent  lieutenant  and  two 
soldiers  approached  a  sentry  on  the  Santa  Lucia  bridge, 
three  miles  east  of  Manila.  The  sentry,  in  accordance 
with  orders,  challenged  the  three  at  once,  and  instead 
of  halting,  the  men  gave  him  an  insolent  reply,  came 
forward,  started  to  cross  his  post,  and  he  fired  and  by 
one  shot  killed  the  lieutenant  and  one  soldier. 

The  remaining  insurgent  ran  back  to  the  insurgent 
line,  and  within  a  minute  or  two  rifle  fire  broke  out 
from  the  insurgent  trenches  in  front  of  the  First 
Nebraska  regiment,  and  war  had  begun.  It  is  said  that 
that  sentry  began  the  war  by  firing  the  first  shot,  but  I 
think  army  officers  here  will  bear  me  out  in  the  state 
ment  that  if  he  had  shot  his  own  captain  under  the 
same  circumstances  he  would  have  gone  scot-free,  or 
even  if  he  had  shot  the  general  commanding  the  Army 
of  the  United  States.  Even  the  President  himself  can 
not  force  his  way  past  a  sentry  of  our  Army.  He  was 
justified  in  shooting  the  men,  and  the  incident  should 
have  been  closed  right  there ;  but  the  excited  insurgents 
in  the  trenches,  hearing  what  had  happened,  opened 
fire  on  the  First  Nebraska,  a  fire  that  spread  like  a 
prairie  fire  on  the  plains  of  Kansas,  for  five  miles  to 
the  right. 

I  shall  not  attempt  to  take  up  your  time  with  a  his 
tory  of  the  campaign  from  Manila  north. 

I  wish  to  say  to  you  something,  however,  about  the 
class  of  officers  and  men  who  are  serving  in  the  Philip 
pines  and  about  some  of  those  magnificent  men  who 
have  lost  their  lives  there.  Of  course,  there  are  all  sorts 


60  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

of  men  in  our  Army,  regular  and  volunteer,  good,  bad, 
and  indifferent ;  but  I  believe  that  ninety-five  per  cent, 
of  the  men  who  constitute  our  Army  are  a  brave  and 
humane  lot  of  men,  who  are  a  credit  to  the  service.  The 
other  five  per  cent,  are  the  kind  that  write  letters  to  the 
newspapers  at  home  and  tell  big  stories. 

I  wish  to  hold  up  a  certain  officer  who  lost  his  life  in 
the  Philippines  as  a  fair  type  of  our  Army  officer,  as 
humane  and  kind  a  gentleman  as  ever  lived,  Captain 
George  J.  Godfrey  of  the  Twenty-second  Infantry,  who 
was  born  here  in  New  York  City,  was  appointed  to 
West  Point  from  here,  and  served  under  New  York 
men.  He  was  a  very  popular  man,  beloved  by  his 
soldiers,  and  by  the  natives  too,  popular  with  his  com 
rades,  humane  and  just,  without  such  a  thing  as  hatred 
in  his  heart. 

I  was  in  a  campaign  one  day  with  Godfrey's  com 
pany,  and  owing  to  the  conditions  there — ambuscades 
being  absolutely  certain— we  ran  into  one  and  had 
a  fierce  fight,  lasting  for  about  half  a  minute;  God 
frey  was  shot  through  the  heart  as  close  to  me  as 
the  president  of  this  club  now  is.  I  heard  the  curses  of 
his  men  and  saw  them  crying,  and  I  knew  what  they 
had  lost  in  their  beloved  captain.  Another  type  of  man 
was  Sergeant  O'Brien,  of  the  Fourth  United  States 
Cavalry,  twenty-five  years  an  enlisted  man  in  the 
Army,  a  magnificent  type  of  the  professional  soldier, 
sober,  attentive  to  his  duties,  courteous,  and  with  great 
pride  in  his  occupation.  O'Brien  had  been  ill  in  the 
hospital  for  some  days ;  he  heard  that  we  were  going  on 
a  scout,  and  he  wanted  to  go  with  the  troop ;  but  his 
captain,  Captain  Keeler,  said:  "No,  Sergeant,  you 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  61 

can't  go;  you  are  not  well  enough."  O'Brien  replied: 
"I  have  been  in  every  fight  with  my  troop  for  twenty- 
five  years,  and  I  hope  I  don't  have  to  be  left  behind 
now. ' ' 

Captain  Keeler  said:  "Well,  come  along. " 

Within  twenty-five  minutes  after  leaving  town  we 
struck  250  insurgents  under  Lacuna,  and  there  was  one 
of  those  wild  minutes  that  are  worth  ten  years  of  an 
ordinary  humdrum  existence,  and  when  it  was  over, 
there  were  forty-four  dead  insurgents  on  the  field,  and 
among  our  own  dead  was  Sergeant  O'Brien,  shot 
through  the  heart.  I  simply  wish  to  hold  up  those  two 
soldiers,  Godfrey  and  O'Brien,  as  fair  samples  of  the 
magnificent  men  who  are  being  sacrificed  in  the  Philip 
pine  Islands. 

Now  I  am  going  to  say  something  which  I  hope  you 
gentlemen  will  not  criticize;  I  am  going  to  say  it  just 
as  mildly  as  I  can;  but  we  who  have  seen  our  men 
killed,  who  have  seen  our  men  die  of  typhoid  fever,  die 
of  dysentery  in  the  hospitals,  and  who  have  buried  them 
in  hundreds  of  nameless  graves  in  the  Philippine 
Islands,  feel  bitterly  about  this  subject.  All  of  those 
men  who  have  fallen  since  the  month  of  January,  1900, 
have  died,  not  because  the  Filipinos  really  had  much 
heart  in  fighting  against  us,  but  because  they  were  sus 
tained  by  a  lot  of  misguided  people  here  in  the  United 
States. 

It  is  perfectly  proper  for  us  to  have  all  sorts  of 
opinions  about  the  advisability  of  holding  the  Philip 
pine  Islands,  as  to  whether  they  are  worth  anything  to 
us,  or  whether  they  are  a  burden  to  us ;  we  are  perfectly 
justified  in  having  as  many  opinions  about  them  as 


62  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

there  are  islands  in  the  Philippines;  but,  for  heaven's 
sake,  let  us  keep  those  opinions  to  ourselves  until  the 
sovereignty  of  the  United  States  has  been  established 
over  every  square  inch  of  those  islands,  and  then  let  us 
get  together  and  fight  the  thing  out  among  ourselves. 

I  have  been  told  by  a  number  of  insurgent  officers  of 
high  rank,  after  their  surrender  or  after  their  capture, 
that  they  were  kept  up  solely,  after  January,  1900,  by 
the  hope  that  the  people  of  the  United  States  would 
compel  the  Government  to  withdraw  from  the  islands. 
I  was  told  that  without  any  hesitation  whatever  by 
even  so  reserved  a  man  as  Aguinaldo  himself. 

The  first  part  of  the  war  was  absolutely  unavoidable, 
but  when  the  insurgent  army  went  to  pieces  in  Janu 
ary,  1900,  when  they  broke  up  into  bands  of  guerrillas, 
then  the  thing  would  have  stopped;  they  would  have 
turned  in  their  arms  and  given  up,  and  all  the  hun 
dreds  of  lives  and  all  the  millions  of  money  expended 
since  that  time  would  have  been  saved. 

I  hope  that  I  may  be  allowed  to  combat  another  im 
pression  that  is  altogether  too  prevalent  in  the  United 
States ;  that  is,  that  the  insurgent  leaders  in  the  Philip 
pines  are  a  very  high  type  of  men,  patriots,  fighting 
for  the  good  of  their  country,  and  that  they  are  to  be 
compared  with  the  men  who  won  the  independence  of 
the  United  States  more  than  a  hundred  years  ago. 

About  the  ablest  military  leader  the  insurgents  had 
was  Antonio  Luna,  who  was  a  brave  man,  a  good  officer, 
accomplished ;  and  as  to  capability  to  handle  troops  in 
the  field,  he  probably  would  come  up  almost  to  the  offi 
cers  of  our  own  Army.  This  man,  on  account  of  his 
personal  courage,  was  gaming  such  prestige  with  the 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  63 

insurgents  that  Aguinaldo  ordered  him  to  be  assas 
sinated,  which  was  done  at  the  town  of  Palanan,  the 
man  being  shot  down  in  cold  blood  by  the  sentries  on 
guard  at  Aguinaldo 's  door.  I  talked  with  the  late 
lamented  dictator  himself  on  that  subject,  and  asked 
him  about  it.  He  said:  "Why,  yes.  I  had  him  killed 
simply  because  if  I  had  not  he  would  have  been  dictator 
in  my  place. ' ' 

In  the  town  of  San  Isidro,  where  I  commanded  for  a 
year  and  a  half,  was  a  family  of  the  name  of  Baya,  a 
Filipino  family.  The  father  had  been  an  opponent 
always  of  a  rebellion;  he  was  a  large  landowner,  and 
had  a  considerable  family.  He  had  five  or  six  sons, 
among  them,  the  youngest  boy,  a  chap  of  about  ten 
years.  This  boy  had  gone  to  school  for  a  couple  of 
years  in  Manila,  but  during  the  war  had  returned  to 
his  home. 

He  came  over  quite  often  to  visit  me  and  talk  with 
me.  He  spoke  Spanish,  and  was  thinking  of  studying 
English.  Consequently  he  got  hold  of  a  grammar,  and 
was  working  away  at  the  English  language,  and  he 
came  to  me  half  a  dozen  times  to  get  some  aid  when 
he  would  get  tangled  up  on  some  of  our  beautiful 
words. 

This  boy  was  suspected  finally  of  being  a  spy  because 
he  came  over  to  my  headquarters  a  few  times.  One 
day  a  little  over  a  year  ago,  his  father  sent  him  just 
outside  the  town  to  see  if  the  crops  on  his  land  were 
ready  to  cut.  It  was  considered  perfectly  safe  to  allow 
the  boy  to  go  out  there;  but  the  insurgent  chief,  Ta- 
gunta,  had  ordered  this  boy  captured  at  all  hazards, 
not  only  because  he  was  suspected  of  being  a  spy,  but 


64  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

also  because  his  father  had  refused  to  pay  taxes  to  the 
insurgent  government. 

This  poor,  helpless  boy,  who  was  as  innocent  of  being 
a  spy  as  any  one  possibly  could  be,  and  who  in  fact 
had  never  discussed  any  phase  of  the  war  with  me  at 
all,  was  taken  by  these  murderers,  tied  to  a  stake,  and 
flogged  to  death.  They  flogged  him  for  three  hours, 
until  he  fell  dead. 

A  few  days  later  the  same  chief  who  had  had  the  boy 
flogged,  and  who  had  been  unable  to  collect  any  taxes 
in  the  town,  made  a  raid  in  the  town  with  a  number  of 
guerrillas,  and  burned  about  three  hundred  houses, 
and  killed  more  than  fifteen  hundred  people,  without 
any  provocation  whatever,  in  order  to  compel  them  to 
pay  taxes  to  the  alleged  insurgent  government.  We 
had  been  hunting  him  for  fully  a  year,  and  lay  in  wait 
for  him  for  many  a  week,  and  I  am  glad  to  say  that  the 
next  time  I  had  command  of  a  detachment,  we  got  him, 
and  now  he  is  with  the  angels. 

Aguinaldo  himself,  tried  in  any  court  in  the  world, 
could  be  convicted  of  the  murder  of  Luna,  and  there  is 
not  one  of  the  insurgent  chiefs  who  could  not  be  con 
victed  of  the  assassination  of  men,  women,  and  children. 

Several  months  ago  two  private  soldiers  of  the 
Twenty-fourth  United  States  Infantry  deserted  from 
the  United  States  Army,  joined  the  Filipinos,  and 
fought  with  them.  They  were  captured  and  brought 
before  a  military  commission,  or  a  general  court-mar 
tial  I  should  say,  and  last  January  they  were  executed, 
for  giving  aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemies  of  the  United 
States. 

These  men  were  poor,  ignorant  soldiers,  men  who 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  65 

were  probably  misled,  or  were  induced  to  do  what  they 
did  through  overindulgence  in  native  intoxicants,  and 
could  not  probably  be  altogether  blamed  for  what  they 
had  done.  They  had  not  great  opportunities  for  a 
proper  understanding  of  the  situation,  and  I  venture  to 
say  that  there  are  a  great  many  men  in  the  United 
States  who  have  done  more  harm  with  their  mouths, 
who  have  done  more  harm  with  their  pens,  than  these 
men  did  with  the  Krag  Jorgensen  rifles  that  they  car 
ried  to  the  enemy. 

I  do  not  want  to  say  anything  brutal,  but,  as  I  say, 
the  Army  feels  bitterly  about  this  business.  I  have  no 
quarrel  with  the  man  who  thinks  that  we  should  not  at 
first  have  taken  the  Philippine  Islands;  I  have  no 
quarrel  with  the  man  who  thinks  a  whole  lot  of  things 
but  who  does  not  say  too  much  about  it  now ;  but  as  to 
those  men  who  have  been  writing  and  talking  about 
this  thing  and  keeping  this  warfare  alive  and  in  the 
field  to-day,  I  say  that  I  would  rather  see  any  one  of 
these  men  hanged,  hanged  for  treason,  hanged  for  giv 
ing  aid  and  comfort  to  the  enemy,  than  see  the  humblest 
soldier  in  the  United  States  Army  lying  dead  on  the 
field  of  battle. 

Those  of  us  who  have  served  with  these  humble  men, 
these  magnificent  soldiers,  these  faithful  fellows,  feel 
for  them  in  a  way  that  others  can  scarcely  understand. 

And  now  I  will  repeat  the  request  that  I  made  be 
fore  :  let  us  keep  still  about  this  business  till  the  war  is 
over,  and  the  Government  of  the  United  States  is 
firmly  established  in  the  Philippines;  and  then  let  us 
get  together  and  fight  it  out  among  ourselves ;  whether 
we  will  allow  them  to  go  entirely,  whether  we  will  give 


66  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

them  autonomy,  or  whether  we  shall  hold  them  down 
with  an  iron  hand. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  these  people  are  fit  for  self- 
government— it  is  perfectly  ridiculous  to  imagine  such 
a  thing.  Of  course  they  clamor  for  it,  and  when  I  say 
that  they  are  not  fit  for  self-government,  I  do  not  mean 
that  they  are  not  fit  for  some  such  government  as  has 
been  given  to  them  under  Judge  Taft,  but  I  mean  ab 
solute  independence.  They  clamor  for  it,  and  people 
say:  "Why  don't  we  do  with  them  as  we  did  with  the 
Cubans?  Promise  it  to  them,  and  then  let  them 
have  it." 

No,  there  is  no  comparison  between  the  Cubans  and 
the  Filipinos,  as  far  as  their  capacity  for  self-govern 
ment  is  concerned.  I  don't  lie  awake  nights  admiring 
the  Cubans,  and  I  know  them  pretty  well,  but  it  cannot 
be  denied  that  the  Filipino  insurgents  have  not  and 
never  had  among  them  such  men  as  that  magnificent 
Maximo  Gomez,  such  a  man  as  Garcia,  or  such  a  man  as 
Lacret,  and  dozens  of  other  insurgent  chiefs ;  such  men 
as  Palma,  who  was  one  of  their  leaders  in  the  rebellion 
of  '68. 

If  we  should  withdraw  from  the  Philippines  to-day, 
withdraw  entirely,  and  not  establish  a  protectorate, 
there  would  be  half  a  dozen  kinds  of  civil  war  inside 
of  six  months ;  there  is  no  possible  doubt  of  that.  Every 
chief  would  gather  his  followers  about  him,  and  they 
would  burn  and  loot  and  march  up  and  down  the 
country,  each  man  killing  those  opposed  to  him,  and 
we  should  have  another  Colombia  or  Venezuela,  or  some 
other  kind  of  South  American  trouble  on  our  hands 
at  once;  and  the  world,  I  am  sure,  would  hold  the 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  67 

United  States  responsible  for  that.  Gentlemen,  I  thank 
you. 

[President  Frank  R.  Lawrence,  after  General  Fun- 
ston  had  seated  himself,  bent  over  and  whispered  to 
him,  and  then  said : ' '  Gentlemen,  I  am  trying  to  prevail 
upon  General  Funston  to  tell  us  something  briefly 
about  the  capture  of  Aguinaldo.  We  have  all  been 
most  deeply  interested  in  the  General's  remarks,  and  if 
we  might  trespass  on  his  good  nature  for  a  very  few 
moments  more  on  that  topic,  we  should  very  much 
like  it"] 

General  Funston  rose  again  and  said: 

I  have  very  serious  doubts  about  the  propriety  of  my 
talking  about  the  capture  of  Aguinaldo.  Of  course 
you  know  it  was  what  they  called  "a  dirty  Irish  trick" 
on  Aguinaldo.  You  will  understand  that  considerable 
doubt  had  existed  for  a  number  of  months  as  to  the 
actual  whereabouts  of  the  dictator.  He  had  retired  to 
the  little  village  of  Baler,  near  the  northeast  coast  of 
Luzon,  across  an  almost  impassable  range  of  moun 
tains,  and  there,  accompanied  by,  I  believe,  eight  officers 
and  forty  soldiers,  had  settled  down,  fifty  miles  from 
the  nearest  town  garrisoned  by  Americans,  and  I  can 
tell  you  that  fifty  miles  over  those  mountains  is  farther 
than  from  here  to  San  Francisco  in  a  Pullman  car. 

He  had  maintained  an  irregular  communication  with 
the  insurgents,  with  chiefs  such  as  Pablo  Tecsom,  La 
cuna,  and  numerous  others,  by  means  of  runners  who 
would  cross  the  mountains  and  then  carry  messages 
south. 

Well,  he  sent  one  lot  of  messages  too  many,  and  they 
fell  into  the  hands  of  Lieutenant  Taylor  of  the  Twenty- 


68  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

fourth  United  States  Infantry.  Taylor's  station  was 
about  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles  south  of  where  Agui- 
naldo  was,  and  was  in  my  own  district.  He  telegraphed 
me  at  once  that  a  band  of  insurgent  soldiers  had  come 
in  and  voluntarily  surrendered,  and  had  given  him  a 
package  of  letters  which  Aguinaldo  had  intrusted  to 
them. 

Taylor  ran  over  them  hastily,  and  saw  that  they 
were  of  great  importance,  because  they  disclosed  the 
whereabouts  of  the  long  lost  Presidente  and  Dictator, 
Aguinaldo. 

One  of  those  letters  was  written  in  cipher,  and  a  very 
difficult  cipher  to  work  out.  It  was  a  cipher  of  figures, 
and  every  third  word  was  in  the  Tagalog  dialect;  the 
others  were  in  Spanish,  and  there  was  a  way  of  sub 
tracting  certain  numbers  in  order  to  get  at  what  letter 
was  meant.  "We  had  no  key  to  work  on.  This  corre 
spondence  and  the  man  who  brought  it  in  were  taken 
down  to  my  headquarters  at  once.  I  had  with  me  then 
an  intelligent  and  courteous  man,  a  man  who  had 
served  ten  years  as  an  enlisted  man  in  the  Spanish 
army,  and  who  knew  the  native  dialects  perfectly.  He 
went  to  work  on  the  cipher  letter  at  about  nine  o'clock 
in  the  evening,  and  at  about  four  o  'clock  in  the  morning 
he  had  worked  it  out;  it  was  about  sixty  words  alto 
gether,  and  it  was  a  magnificent  piece  of  work.  I 
believe  that  feature  of  the  thing  can  scarcely  be  ap 
preciated  by  any  one  who  does  not  understand  how 
difficult  a  cipher  is  without  a  key,  especially  when  it 
runs  into  two  languages,  and  those  two  languages  dis 
similar. 

But  we  found  that  Aguinaldo  had  suspended  his 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  69 

command  in  the  central  districts  of  Luzon,  and  that  his 
cousin,  Baldomero  Aguinaldo,  was  to  succeed  him.  In 
this  letter  he  told  Baldomero  Aguinaldo  that  as  soon 
as  he  had  relieved  Alejandrino  he  should  select  from 
the  various  insurgent  bands  all  through  that  region 
about  four  hundred  armed  men  and  send  them  to  him 
at  once. 

I  talked  with  the  man  who  had  brought  the  corre 
spondence,  and  suggested  several  plans  for  Aguinaldo 's 
capture,  all  of  which  he  said  were  impossible. 

Finally  I  said  to  this  man:  "Aguinaldo  is  expecting 
reinforcements,  from  this  letter.  Suppose  we  go  there, 
passing  ourselves  off  as  these  reinforcements,  and  tak 
ing  along  some  Americans  as  prisoners;  how  about 
that?"  He  said:  "Good,  that  will  do;  that  will  do; 
we  can  do  it. ' ' 

Then  I  sent  the  plan  to  my  immediate  commanding 
officer,  General  Wheaton,  in  Manila,  who  approved  it 
and  forwarded  it  to  General  MacArthur,  and  they  at 
once  telegraphed  me  to  come  to  Manila.  I  talked  the 
plan  over  again  with  General  MacArthur,  and  after 
directing  some  slight  changes  he  ordered  us  to  go  ahead 
and  make  arrangements  with  the  admiral  commanding 
the  squadron  at  Cavite  to  give  us  one  of  the  smaller 
gunboats. 

Our  plan  was  to  take  a  company  of  our  own  soldiers, 
Macabebes,  who  have  been  in  our  service  and  always 
against  the  insurgents,  and  pass  them  off  as  insurgent 
troops  by  merely  putting  them  in  the  clothing  of  the 
country. 

I  will  say  here  that  there  seems  to  be  a  very  general 
misapprehension  of  the  fact  that  we  had  gone  to  Agui- 


70  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

naldo  clothed  in  insurgent  uniforms.  The  fact  is  that 
we  had  been  accustomed  to  going  about  in  all  sorts  of 
uniforms,  and  sometimes  with  no  uniforms  at  all.  But 
we  took  along  some  insurgent  uniforms,  probably 
about  twenty,  although  not  more  than  half  a  dozen 
were  worn  at  all ;  and  it  is  a  fact  that  having  those  in 
surgent  uniforms  with  us  had  no  bearing  on  the  success 
of  the  expedition. 

We  saw  that  it  would  be  necessary  to  lull  by  decoy 
letters  any  suspicions  that  Aguinaldo  might  have  at 
the  approach  of  an  armed  force. 

In  these  letters  we  merely  made  mention  of  the  fact 
that  Lacuna  had  received  his  communications  of  a  cer 
tain  date,  and  that  he,  Lacuna,  had  received  orders 
from  Baldomero  Aguinaldo  to  forward  immediately  to 
the  north  one  of  his  best  guerrilla  companies,  and  that 
he  was  sending  them  with  Hilario  Placido,  who  accom 
panied  us,  and  three  or  four  others  whom  he  men 
tioned. 

It  was  a  lucky  thing  for  us  to  get  such  a  ship  as  the 
Vickslurg,  and  so  fine  an  officer  as  Captain  Barry  in 
command  of  her,  and  such  a  lot  of  sailors  as  manned 
her,  because  if  we  had  had  to  depend  on  any  merchant 
ship  in  the  world,  or  any  picked-up  crew  of  men,  I 
don't  know  what  in  hell  we— I  mean  we  would  never 
have  put  that  expedition  through  successfully. 

The  Vicksburg  sailed  from  Manila  on  the  6th  of 
March,  1901,  with  a  force  consisting  of  five  American 
officers,  including  myself,  seventy-nine  Macabebe 
scouts,  four  ex-insurgent  officers,  and  Sagovia,  who  had 
given  up  the  correspondence  from  Aguinaldo.  Four 
days  later  we  reached  Casiguran  Bay  on  the  east  coast 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  71 

of  Luzon,  and  ran  up  the  bay  for  about  ten  miles,  and 
there  we  landed,  110  miles  south  of  where  Aguinaldo 
was. 

The  country  between  the  place  of  debarkation  and 
his  camp  was  composed  of  almost  impassable  mountains 
which  had  never  been  crossed  by  a  white  man,  except 
once  by  a  Jesuit  priest,  about  twenty-five  years  before. 
The  country  was  inhabited  mostly  by  savages,  but  there 
was  about  twenty  miles  north  of  our  landing-place  a 
village  known  as  Casiguran,  a  small  town  of  not  over 
three  hundred  people.  They  had  a  Presidente,  or 
mayor,  and  a  small  force  of  insurgent  soldiers. 

We  knew  it  would  be  necessary  for  us  to  land  south 
ward  of  this  town,  because  the  coast  from  there  north 
was  absolutely  inaccessible,  being  composed  of  precipi 
tous  cliffs.  I  knew  also  that  landing  an  armed  force  in 
this  town  would  cause  the  inhabitants  to  take  to  the 
woods  unless  we  sent  some  correspondence  to  them. 
So  we  wrote  another  letter.  This  letter  was  signed  by 
Hilario  Placido,  and  merely  said  to  the  mayor  of  the 
town  that  he  was  on  his  way  north  to  join  Aguinaldo ; 
that  he  had  captured  five  American  prisoners,  and  that 
he  would  remain  in  his  town  for  about  two  days,  and 
told  him  to  provide  quarters  and  rations  for  his  men 
at  once. 

We  sent  Cecilia  Sigismondo,  two  soldiers,  and  two 
Macabebe  scouts  to  town  with  this  letter,  and  we  went 
in  later.  When  we  reached  there  the  people  were  out 
to  greet  us.  They  looked  with  considerable  curiosity  at 
the  American  prisoners,  we  being  the  first  they  had 
ever  seen.  The  Macabebes,  though,  thought  it  was  a 
great  joke,  and  it  was  with  great  difficulty  that  we  were 


72  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

able  to  keep  these  men  from  laughing  and  giving  the 
whole  business  away. 

Before  landing,  we  five  Americans  were  dressed  en 
tirely  as  private  soldiers,  in  the  uniform  of  the  United 
States  Army,  but  with  no  insignia  of  rank.  Each  man 
wore  a  campaign  hat,  a  blue  shirt,  and  a  pair  of  khaki 
trousers,  and  carried  no  extras,  I  believe,  but  a  few 
that  did  n't  weigh  very  much  anyhow,  and  when  we 
reached  Casiguran  we  were  turned  over  to  the  Casi- 
guran  authorities  and  put  in  the  town  jail. 

We  remained  two  days  and  nights  in  Casiguran,  and 
none  of  the  people,  neither  the  Presidents  nor  any  of 
the  other  town  officials,  nor  any  of  the  soldiers,  ever 
suspected  anything  at  all.  We  obtained  from  the  Presi- 
dente  a  runner  and  two  guides  to  go  north  to  Aguinaldo 
and  tell  him  that  we  were  coining  on.  These  men 
carried  the  two  decoy  letters  written  over  the  signature 
of  Lacuna,  and  also  a  letter  from  Hilario  Placido  to 
Aguinaldo,  in  which  he  stated  that  in  accordance  with 
orders  received  from  Lacuna  he  had  taken  up  his 
march,  and  after  nineteen  days  spent  in  crossing  the 
mountains  had  reached  Casiguran,  and  was  now  on  his 
way  north;  that  on  his  way  he  had  fallen  in  with  a 
detachment  of  ten  American  soldiers,  of  whom  he  had 
killed  three,  two  had  escaped,  and  he  was  bringing  the 
other  five,  us,  as  prisoners. 

It  is  too  long  a  story  to  go  through,  that  terrible 
march  of  110  miles.  We  left  Casiguran  unable  to  ob 
tain  a  full  supply  of  cracked  corn ;  we  had  about  three 
days'  rations,  counting  on  two  meals  a  day,  and  with 
probably  one  day's  ration  of  dried  meat.  We  simply 
thought  we  would  take  chances.  If  the  march  had 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  73 

lasted  another  day,  if  we  had  been  twenty  miles  farther 
away,  not  a  single  one  of  us  would  ever  have  got  out  of 
the  country  alive.  When  we  finally  reached  our  des 
tination,  some  of  the  Macabebes  had  given  up,  some  of 
them  were  crawling  on  all  fours,  and  I  myself  had  to 
lie  down  every  half -hour  for  a  minute  or  two,  so  weak 
that  I  could  not  walk. 

For  the  first  six  days  we  made  this  cracked  corn  hold 
out,  with  the  dried  meat;  then  we  caught  small  snails 
and  ate  them ;  we  scraped  limpets  off  the  rocks  and  ate 
them,  for  we  were  marching  along  the  sea ;  and  I  regret 
to  say  that  we  also  ate  an  octopus.  I  know  the  octopus 
is  supposed  to  live  in  New  York,  and,  therefore,  I  am 
afraid  to  speak  about  that.  This  octopus  is  a  sort  of 
small  devil-fish,  and  the  Macabebes  made  a  stew  of 
it.  I  took  some,  and  I  don't  believe  I  care  for  any 
more. 

Seven  days  after  leaving  the  town  of  Casiguran,  we 
reached  a  point  on  the  coast  where  the  trail  turned 
inland,  and  from  there  it  was  only  eight  miles  to  Agui- 
naldo's  camp.  As  I  have  said  before,  the  men  were  so 
weary  and  falling  out,  some  of  them  were  ten  miles 
behind  the  column  and  did  not  get  in  that  night  until 
long  after  midnight,  and  we  were  very  much  wrought 
up,  for  the  reason  that  no  messenger  had  been  sent  out 
to  meet  us,  and  we  suspected  treachery.  You  see,  we 
had  to  bring  twelve  natives  as  guides  and  packbearers, 
and  the  Macabebes  had  committed  a  few  indiscretions 
in  the  way  of  talking,  and  we  were  very  suspicious  for 
fear  that  word  had  got  to  Aguinaldo,  as  one  of  the 
twelve  packbearers  had  disappeared  and  we  did  not 
know  where  he  had  gone.  As  we  found  out  afterward, 


74  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

he  had  got  tired  of  good,  honest  work,  and  had  gone 
back  home. 

When  we  reached  this  point  on  the  coast  where  the 
trail  turns  inland,  we  met  an  old  Tagalog  and  a  few 
Belugas.  The  old  man  said  he  had  been  sent  down 
there  to  build  a  shed  where  the  American  prisoners 
were  to  be  confined,  as  we  were  not  to  be  brought  into 
the  town.  He  also  had  a  note  from  Simon  Villia  ad 
dressed  to  Hilario  Placido,  telling  him  that  he  must 
under  no  circumstances  bring  the  Americans  into  the 
town,  because  it  would  not  do  for  them  to  know  the 
trails.  He  said  that  we  should  be  left  there  with  a 
guard  of  ten  men,  and  that  the  others  the  following 
morning  would  continue  the  march. 

The  situation  was  now  very  serious.  "We  were  afraid 
to  absolutely  disobey  these  orders  for  fear  suspicion 
would  be  aroused;  we  were  not  sure  that  we  were  not 
suspected.  Finally  we  arranged  to  start  the  next  morn 
ing,  the  Americans  remaining  behind,  but  would  follow 
and  finally  join  the  column. 

So  when  day  broke  on  the  morning  of  the  day  on 
which  the  capture  was  made,  Sigismondo,  Hilario  Pla 
cido  and  the  other  insurgent  officers,  and  all  of  the 
Macabebes  except  ten,  started  for  Palanan,  guided  by 
the  old  man.  We  five  Americans  were  left  behind 
under  the  guard  of  a  very  intelligent  corporal. 

I  had  told  this  corporal,  talking  to  him  in  Spanish, 
what  he  was  to  do.  I  told  him  that  after  the  column 
had  gone,  a  note  or  letter— you  see,  we  still  had  this 
letter  habit— would  come  back,  ordering  us  to  join  the 
column.  I  had  given  Sigismondo  his  instructions,  so 
when  Sigismondo  got  some  distance  away  with  his  col- 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  75 

umn,  he  sat  down  and  wrote  a  note  in  Tagalog  back  to 
this  Macabebe  corporal,  saying : 

"Have  just  received  orders  from  the  Dictator  to 
bring  the  American  prisoners  into  Palanan  with  the 
column,  the  other  orders  being  rescinded. ' ' 

We  were  a  little  bit  suspicious  of  these  Tagalogs  who 
were  building  the  house,  so  we  showed  the  note,  and 
they  said:  "All  right,  go  along,  go  along. "  So  that 
thing  worked. 

The  other  Americans  were  better  marchers  than  I 
was,  so  I  delayed  the  procession,  but  we  managed  to 
come  up  with  the  rear  column  of  Macabebes  just  as  the 
last  detachment  of  them  was  crossing  the  river.  The 
river  probably  was  150  yards  wide  and  fifteen  or 
twenty  feet  deep;  we  had  only  one  boat  in  which  it 
could  be  crossed,  and  this  boat  could  carry  only  eight 
people  at  a  time,  consequently  the  Macabebes  had  been 
ferried  across  eight  at  a  time  and  then  formed  on  the 
other  bank,  and  just  as  the  last  boatload  of  them  was 
being  taken  across,  we  Americans  came  down. 

In  the  meantime  Hilario  Placido  and  Sigismondo 
had  paid  their  respects  to  Aguinaldo.  They  found  him 
surrounded  by  eight  officers  in  the  reception-room  of 
his  house;  they  were  all  armed,  and  outside,  standing 
at  attention,  were  the  men  of  Aguinaldo 's  escort. 

It  was  a  most  trying  experience  for  Hilario  Placido 
and  Sigismondo  to  go  among  these  officers  and  stay 
there  talking  with  them  for  half  an  hour,  killing  time 
until  they  could  see  us  Americans  crossing  the  river. 

Sigismondo  kept  looking  out  of  the  window  at  his 
right  all  the  time  until  he  finally  saw  us ;  he  knew  then 
that  the  time  had  come  for  action,  but  he  confessed  to 


76   SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

me  afterward  that  it  was  a  terribly  trying  experience, 
and  I  have  no  doubt  it  was. 

Well,  the  Macabebes  marched  up,  about  half  a  dozen 
escorting  us,  and  Sigismondo  walked  out  of  the  house 
and  said  to  one  of  the  insurgent  lieutenants  who  was 
with  us,  ' '  Give  it  to  them, ' '  or  something  of  that  kind ; 
anyhow  we  did  go  for  them. 

The  Macabebes  were  so  excited  when  they  fired  that 
their  marksmanship  was  pretty  wild  and  they  hit  only 
two  men,  for  which  I  am  very  glad.  We  had  no  desire 
to  kill  those  insurgent  soldiers.  All  we  wished  to  do 
was  to  capture  Aguinaldo.  I  wished  the  two  men  had 
escaped,  but  that  is  one  of  the  unfortunate  incidents  of 
war.  The  Macabebes  fired  on  those  men  and  two  fell 
dead;  the  others  retreated,  firing  as  they  ran,  and  they 
retreated  with  such  great  alacrity  and  enthusiasm  that 
they  dropped  eighteen  rifles  and  a  thousand  rounds  of 
ammunition. 

Sigismondo  rushed  back  into  the  house,  pulled  his 
revolver,  and  told  the  insurgent  officers  to  surrender. 
They  all  threw  up  their  hands  except  Villia,  Agui 
naldo 's  chief  of  staff;  he  had  on  one  of  those  new 
fangled  Mauser  revolvers,  and  he  wanted  to  try  it. 
But  before  he  had  the  Mauser  out  he  was  shot  twice; 
Sigismondo  was  a  pretty  fair  marksman  himself. 

Alambra  was  shot  in  the  face.  He  jumped  out  of  the 
window,  went  clear  down  into  the  river,  the  water 
being  twenty-five  feet  below  the  bank,  swam  across,  and 
got  away.  He  surrendered  five  months  afterward. 

Villia,  shot  in  the  shoulder,  followed  him  out  of  the 
window  and  into  the  river.  But  the  Macabebes  saw 
him  and  ran  down  to  the  river-bank,  waded  in  and 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  77 

fished  him  out,  and  kicked  him  all  the  way  up  the  bank 
and  asked  him  how  he  liked  it. 

Santiago  Barcelona,  Aguinaldo 's  treasurer,  gave  up 
at  once,  and  apparently  was  glad  he  was  captured. 
The  other  officers  went  out  of  the  door  and  windows 
and  everywhere. 

Hilario  Placido,  who  had  been  an  insurgent  officer 
and  had  been  shot  through  the  lungs  earlier  in  the  war, 
back  in  1899,  was  personally  acquainted  with  Agui- 
naldo,  and  was  standing  next  to  him  when  the  firing 
began.  Sigismondo  had  gone  outside  and  ordered  the 
firing. 

When  this  firing  began,  Aguinaldo  thought  his  own 
men  had  ordered  the  firing  to  greet  the  reinforcements 
they  were  expecting,  so  he  stepped  to  the  window  and 
said:  "Stop  that  foolishness."  Then  Hilario  Placido 
hurled  him  to  the  floor,  and  said :  "You  are  a  prisoner ; 
keep  still." 

About  that  time  we  five  Americans  got  into  the  room, 
and  Aguinaldo  got  on  his  feet ;  and  he  was  a  very  mel 
low  individual.  He  said :  ' '  This  is  not  true  ?  This  is  a 
joke?"  I  replied:  "No,  this  is  not  a  joke;  this  is  the 
real  thing. ' '  He  was  fearfully  excited,  as  a  man  would 
naturally  be  under  those  circumstances.  He  asked  us 
to  protect  him,  and  I  assured  him  that  he  would  be  pro 
tected. 

The  turmoil  was  all  over  in  a  very  few  minutes,  but 
the  Macabebes  were  wildly  excited ;  they  had  been  under 
a  terrible  nervous  strain,  and  especially  for  an  hour  the 
situation  was  very  trying  for  them;  they  ran  around 
like  wild  men,  and  insisted  upon  hugging  us  and  call 
ing  out  in  Spanish,  "What  's  the  matter  with  the 


78  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Macabebes?  They 're  all  right.  Who 's  all  right  ?  The 
Macabebes. ' ' 

They  were  men  no  better,  nor  any  worse,  than  the 
other  Filipinos.  They  were  simply  Filipinos,  and  did 
not  constitute  a  separate  tribe,  but  merely  belonged  to 
a  certain  village ;  they  have  never  been  insurgents  sim 
ply  because  of  the  lack  of  opportunity. 

As  soon  as  Aguinaldo's  escort  had  broken  and  run, 
we  collected  the  Macabebes  as  fast  as  we  could,  and 
came  down  and  put  the  three  prisoners,  Aguinaldo, 
Villia,  and  Barcelona,  into  Aguinaldo's  bedroom.  They 
were  very  desirous  that  the  American  officers  be  in 
there  all  of  the  time,  as  they  had  little  faith  in  the 
Macabebes. 

The  Macabebes  had  recognized  Aguinaldo,  and  were 
anxious  to  kill  him.  They  had  no  particular  spite 
against  the  other  insurgents.  It  was  in  1897  that  300 
Macabebes  were  penned  up  in  church  and  burned  to 
death  by  an  insurgent  force  under  Aguinaldo,  and  that 
is  the  reason  they  felt  so  bitterly  toward  him  per 
sonally. 

However,  we  took  every  possible  precaution  to  pro 
tect  the  prisoners  from  harm,  and  treated  them  with 
all  consideration.  They  appeared  very  much  surprised 
that  they  were  not  put  in  irons,  and  they  asked  if  they 
were  to  be  sent  to  Guam— evidently  they  had  heard  of 
that  cheerful  resort— and  also  if  they  were  to  be  exe 
cuted.  We  told  them  it  was  very  unlikely,  but  that  it 
would  depend  very  much  on  their  own  conduct. 

The  first  night  we  spent  in  Palanan  did  not  give  us 
much  uneasiness,  because  we  were  sure  that  the  in 
surgents  who  had  escaped  would  not  be  able  to  get 


FREDERICK  FUNSTON  79 

together  again.  The  second  night  we  took  a  great 
many  precautions,  as  we  were  afraid,  not  only  that 
these  men  would  get  back  to  the  town,  but  that  they 
would  gather  other  insurgent  soldiers,  and  possibly 
collect  a  number  of  rifles,  and  we  had  no  reserve  supply 
of  ammunition.  So  on  the  second  night  that  we  re 
mained  in  Palanan  we  kept  half  of  the  soldiers  and 
half  of  the  officers  on  watch  until  twelve  o'clock;  then 
they  lay  down  and  the  others  remained  up,  the  men 
having  their  rifles  loaded.  But  there  was  no  attack 
made  on  us,  and  no  shot  fired  at  all. 

Finally  the  day  came  on  which  we  were  to  meet  the 
VicJcsburg  at  Casiguran  Bay.  It  was  only  six  miles 
from  this  point  to  Palanan.  We  did  not  return  to 
where  we  left  the  coast  before,  which  was  eight  miles 
distant,  but  we  struck  it  at  another  point.  It  should 
take  three  hours  to  make  this  march,  but,  owing  to  the 
fact  that  neither  Aguinaldo  nor  the  officers  with  him 
knew  the  trail,  we  lost  our  way  and  were  six  hours  get 
ting  down  there.  Just  as  we  reached  the  coast  we  saw 
a  black  speck  of  smoke  away  out  at  sea,  and  we  knew 
that  the  Navy  was  doing  things  right,  just  as  it  usually 
does  them.  She  steamed  in  within  two  miles  of  the 
shore,  it  not  being  safe  to  come  closer,  so  we  arranged 
a  signal. 

We  had  brought  down  with  us  a  bed  sheet,  and  this 
was  rigged  on  a  bamboo  pole,  and  we  signaled:  "We 
have  him ;  send  boats  for  all. ' ' 

We  watched  with  our  glasses  the  signal  on  the  Vicks- 
~burg,  and  finally  we  spelled  it  out : 

"Bully.  We  are  coming."  But  a  tremendous  surf 
was  running,  and  we  had  very  serious  doubts  as  to 


80  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

our  ability  to  get  on  board  the  ship.  All  of  the  ship's 
boats  except  a  steam-launch  were  lowered,  and  they 
came  through  that  surf— and  honestly,  it  seems  to  me 
as  if  it  was  half  as  high  as  this  room;  maybe  it  was 
higher,  I  don't  know.  One  of  the  boats  turned  upside 
down,  but  finally  they  came  through  the  surf,  and  the 
men  cheered  and  yelled. 

The  commander  was  on  the  first  boat  that  came 
through. 

We  ran  up,  and,  of  course,  there  were  very  cordial 
greetings.  It  seemed  to  me  those  men  never  stopped 
howling  and  yelling;  they  just  went  through  the  surf, 
and  they  were  drenched  through  and  through,  from 
head  to  foot,  but  that  did  n't  make  any  difference,  when 
they  got  through  with  their  boats  they  just  yelled  and 
whooped  it  up. 

We  got  out  with  a  great  deal  of  difficulty.  A  couple 
of  trips  had  to  be  made,  but  fortunately  we  got  through 
without  any  accident  at  all,  and  we  were  finally  landed 
on  board  the  Vicksburg.  The  officers  lent  us  some 
clothing,  and  we  sat  down  to  a  very  good  dinner ;  and 
two  days  later  we  turned  the  late-lamented  Emilio 
Aguinaldo  over  to  General  MacArthur. 


MINOT  J.  SAVAGE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  FREDERICK  FUNSTON, 
MARCH  8,  1902 

I  FEEL  a  little  ashamed  to-night,  in  the  presence  of 
men  who  do  things.  I  am  only  a  man  who  advises 
people  to  do  them.  I  was  standing  in  my  study  a  little 
while  ago,  looking  at  a  portrait  of  Giordano  Bruno. 
Mr.  Collier  was  standing  by  my  side,  and  I  said :  *  *  That 
is  a  type  of  man  that  it  is  very  difficult  for  us  to  dupli 
cate  in  the  modern  world,  a  man  willing  for  his  con 
victions  to  go  to  prison  for  six  years,  and  then  go  out 
into  the  market-place  and  be  burned,  rather  than  be 
false  to  those  convictions."  Mr.  Collier  quoted  two 
verses;  I  have  not  a  very  good  memory,  and  I  may 
make  a  mistake  in  quoting  them,  but  they  seemed  to 
me  appropriate  here  to-night  as  I  was  listening  to 
General  Funston's  simple,  wonderful,  and  admirable 
story : 

A  noble  thing  is  prudence,  and  they  are  useful  friends 
Who  never  make  beginnings  until  they  see  the  ends ; 
But  give  me  now  and  then  a  man,  and  I  will  make  him  king, 
Just  to  take  the  consequence,  and  just  to  do  the  thin^. 

I  trust  I  may  be  pardoned  just  one  personal  word. 
There  is  no  place  in  New  York  where  I  would  rather  be 
than  with  the  Lotos  Club.  For  three  years  I  have  not 

81 


82  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

been  able  to  accept  any  invitations  to  dinners,  or  go 
beyond  the  necessary  work  which  devolves  upon  me ;  I 
have  been  obliged  to  decline  coming  here  to  meet  you 
on  these  most  pleasant  occasions.  I  could  not  decline 
to-night ;  I  wanted  to  be  here  and  see  the  man  that  did 
it.  And  when  I  was  asked,  my  first  impression  was 
that  I  would  look  over  the  whole  field  and  finally 
grapple  with  the  Philippine  problem.  The  Army  has 
been  about  it  for  a  good  while,  the  President  has  been 
engaged  in  it,  and  the  Senate  as  well— and,  most  im 
portant  of  all,  the  newspapers ;  but  still  there  are  cer 
tain  outlying  provinces  that  have  not  been  taken  care 
of ;  so  it  occurred  to  me  that  I  would  tell  you  just  what 
ought  to  be  done  in  order  to  bring  the  thing  to  the 
proper  conclusion ;  but  as  I  looked  over  the  field,  there 
were  certain  serious  difficulties  that  stood  in  the  way. 
I  have  had  authoritative  information  that  there  is  no 
war  in  the  Philippines  at  all,  only  a  few  guerrilla  bands 
here  and  there,  and  that  in  a  little  while  all  we  shall 
need  will  be  a  few  soldiers  to  act  as  police.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  have  been  informed  on  equally  good 
authority  that  there  is  a  tremendous  war  going  on 
there,  and  that  we  need  to  double  the  number  of  our 
troops.  I  have  been  informed  that  the  Filipinos  are  a 
peaceful,  loving,  law-abiding  kind  of  people,  and  that 
they  are  very  much  like  the  citizens  of  the  provinces  in 
this  country  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution;  that  they 
want  liberty,  and  that  they  deserve  it  as  much  as  did 
our  forefathers  in  1776.  I  am  informed,  on  the  other 
hand,  that  they  are  simply  a  set  of  bandits  and  out 
laws,  and  that  they  deserve  no  consideration  whatever. 
Then  I  am  told,  in  regard  to  our  own  troops,  that  they 


MINOT  J.  SAVAGE  83 

are  lamb-like,  and  loving,  and  gentle,  and  kind,  and 
then  I  am  told  on  equal  authority  that  they  are  a  set 
of  conscienceless  cutthroats,  engaged  in  the  merciless 
slaughter  of  men,  women,  and  children.  I  am  told  that 
the  Filipinos  are  a  religious  people ;  then  I  am  told 
that  they  have  a  half-dozen  different  kinds  of  religion. 
I  am  told  all  sorts  of  contradictory  stories,  so  that  when 
I  had  decided  that  I  would  settle  the  question  to-night, 
and  had  made  up  my  mind  I  would  look  about  for  the 
facts,  you  see  what  I  have  encountered. 

There  are  a  great  many  ways,  I  suppose,  in  which  a 
man  can  get  killed  in  the  Philippines;  there  are  a 
choice  lot  of  diseases  that  he  can  contract;  he  can  be 
shot  in  the  back  or  killed  in  open  warfare;  he  can  be 
captured  and  tortured  to  death ;  but  there  are  a  dozen 
ways  of  being  killed  in  New  York  at  the  present  time  to 
one  in  the  Philippines.  A  man  might  fall  into  the 
Subway.  He  might  get  blown  up  by  dynamite,  burned 
in  a  hotel,  pitched  on  his  head  as  he  attempts  to  get  off  a 
car;  all  sorts  of  ways.  A  man  is  exposing  his  life  at 
every  turn  in  New  York.  A  gentleman,  a  stranger  in 
the  city,  the  other  day  wanted  to  find  a  particular  insti 
tution,  and  he  asked  a  gentleman  the  way  to  the 
Emergency  Hospital,  and  he  answered:  "Cross  Broad 
way,  anywhere  you  please. "  So  I  know  General  Fun- 
ston  is  a  brave  man  to  come  to  New  York ;  but  can  we 
trust  a  man  who  would  cheat  Aguinaldo  ?  Now  I  have 
had  trusty  information  from  some  of  the  anti-imperial 
ists  in  Boston,  and  they  tell  me  it  was  a  sort  of  mean 
thing  he  did.  A  man  who  is  at  war  and  who  will  go 
about  to  cheat  his  adversary  and  not  tell  him  what  his 
tactics  are  beforehand,  is  not  to  be  trusted  in  private 


84   SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

life.  How  can  your  adversary  admire  your  tactics 
unless  he  knows  what  they  are?  So  I  did  not  ask 
General  Funston  the  condition  of  things  in  the  Philip 
pines. 

But,  gentlemen,  for  one  moment  let  me  be  serious, 
and  though  I  am  a  man  of  peace,  and  though  I  regret 
that  such  a  thing  as  war  must  exist  on  the  face  of  the 
earth,  let  me  say  that  I  am  proud  of  the  men  who  took 
their  lives  in  their  hands  to  uphold  the  honor  and  in 
tegrity  of  the  country  that  we  all  so  sincerely  love  and 
admire. 

Ever  since  the  battle  of  Manila  Bay  I  have  been  ask 
ing  to  find  out  what  it  is  the  opponents  of  the  war  would 
have  done.  Admiral  Dewey  at  one  stroke  destroyed 
the  only  government  that  existed  in  the  Philippines. 
What  were  we  to  do  then  ?  Were  we  to  steal  away  and 
leave  chaos,  murder,  bloodshed,  and  kindred  evils  be 
hind  us?  It  seems  to  me  that  the  United  States  was 
under  the  highest  of  all  obligations  to  see  that  the  con 
dition  of  things  in  the  Philippines  was  no  worse  than 
it  was  before.  Should  we  give  the  islands  away?  To 
whom?  Germany,  perhaps,  would  have  liked  them; 
possibly  England  would  have  liked  them.  Which  of 
these  two  was  our  intimate  friend  on  that  occasion? 
Which  had  the  best  claim  to  them  ?  We  were  under  the 
highest  of  all  moral  obligations  to  take  seriously  and 
earnestly  the  consequences  of  our  own  acts.  If  Agui- 
naldo  represented  all  the  people  of  the  Philippine 
Islands,  and  if  I  believed  he  was  competent  to  rule 
them,  and  that  they  wanted  him  for  a  ruler  whether  he 
was  competent  or  not,  I  should  be  in  favor  of  giving 
him  an  opportunity  of  seeing  what  he  could  do.  Some 


MINOT  J.   SAVAGE  85 

newspapers  are  saying  we  have  no  right  to  establish  a 
government  without  the  consent  of  the  governed. 

Would  it  be  any  better  if  we  put  Aguinaldo  in  con 
trol  of  the  islands  without  the  consent  of  the  governed  ? 
Would  that  be  an  improvement  upon  the  present 
policy  ?  It  seems  to  me,  gentlemen,  that  we  have  done 
the  only  manly,  honorable,  noble,  true  thing  that  was 
possible  to  us  in  the  conditions  which  followed  the  bat 
tle  of  Manila  Bay.  I  felt  like  saying  a  most  hearty 
"Amen"  to  General  Funston  when  he  said  to-night, 
'  *  Let  us  first  establish  order  in  the  islands ;  then  let  us 
decide  what  it  is  best  for  us  to  do  with  them. ' ' 

If  you  will  pardon  me  in  taking  your  time,  I  will  go 
one  step  farther  by  way  of  suggestion.  I  am  not  one 
of  those  who  believe  that  because  the  United  States 
is  rich  and  prosperous  and  capable  of  living  quietly  at 
home  on  its  own  resources,  therefore  it  is  the  best 
and  wisest  and  most  humane  thing  for  us  to  do.  A  man 
may  be  rich,  may  be  prosperous,  may  have  everything 
that  the  heart  desires,  but  has  he,  therefore,  the  right 
to  live  a  quiet,  selfish  life,  taking  no  interest  in  the 
world  outside,  not  caring  what  comes  to  his  fellows? 
We  are  rich,  a  great,  strong  people,  the  richest  and 
strongest  people  probably  on  the  face  of  the  earth  to 
day,  but— Noblesse  oblige.  No,  ability  has  obligations, 
and  I  believe  that  the  United  States  has  done  wisely  and 
well  in  saying,  "We  propose  to  have  something  to  say 
in  regard  to  the  world's  affairs."  I  believe  that  we, 
with  our  power,  and  wealth,  and  resources,  are  respon 
sible  for  the  way  things  go  outside  of  our  own  limits. 
There  is  enough  English  blood  in  my  veins  to  make  me 
feel  like  saying  that  I  would  like  to  see  an  understand- 


86  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ing  (I  do  not  care  for  a  treaty)  on  the  part  of  the 
English-speaking  peoples  of  the  world.  If  we  choose,  if 
we  were  wise  enough,  if  we  can  put  under  our  foot  the 
petty  jealousies  that  disturb  international  affairs,  we 
can  control  the  destiny  of  this  planet.  We  can  control 
it  in  the  interest  of  civilization,  the  real  welfare  of  the 
world ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  the  wickedest  thing 
I  can  conceive,  for  us,  either  through  jealousy  or  petti 
ness,  or  any  other  reason,  to  shirk  this  great  human 
obligation. 

Let  us  then  have  an  understanding.  England,  criti 
cize  her  as  you  will,  has  never  taken  a  step  around  this 
planet  anywhere,  that  she  has  not  left  a  higher  type  of 
civilization  behind  her.  I  believe  it  is  our  duty  to 
pacify  the  Philippines,  to  give  them,  so  far  as  they  are 
capable  of  receiving  it,  our  kind  of  civilization ;  and  by 
and  by,  if  they  are  capable  of  going  alone,  let  them  go 
alone,  but  do  not  set  them  adrift  and  let  them  become 
another  Haiti,  a  kind  of  country  that  has  a  revolution 
every  six  months,  where  there  is  perpetual  warfare, 
treachery,  and  assassination  of  every  kind.  "We  have 
no  right  to  do  this.  The  one  thing  we  have  a  right  to 
do  is  to  give  the  Philippines  the  highest  type  of  civiliza 
tion  and  the  most  perfect  peace  they  are  capable  of 
receiving  at  our  hands. 


CHAELES  S.  GLEED 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  FEEDEEICK  FUNSTON, 
MAECH  8,  1902 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to-night  to  talk  to  you  about  five 
minutes,  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  a  little  of  the 
personal  pronoun  that  the  General  omitted. 

Well,  in  the  beginning,  he  is  Scotch-Irish,  by  pedi 
gree  and  by  performance,  and  then  he  had  the  mag 
nificent  good  fortune  to  breathe  Kansas  air  and  grow 
on  Kansas  soil.  But  the  real  point  about  him,  it 
seems  to  me,  is  that  he  has  had  an  eye  for  the  oppor 
tunity,  and  the  courage  to  improve  the  opportunity. 
We  had  a  strong  man  in  Kansas  once,  named  Ingalls, 
John  J.  Ingalls,  and  he  wrote  a  sonnet  called  "  Oppor 
tunity  ' ' ;  and  I  never  think  of  Funston  without  think 
ing  of  it. 

Master  of  human  destinies  am  I ! 
Fame,  love,  and  fortune  on  my  footsteps  wait. 
Cities  and  fields  I  walk ;  I  penetrate 
Deserts  and  seas  remote,  and  passing  by 
Hovel  and  mart  and  palace— soon  or  late 
I  knock  unbidden  once  at  every  gate ! 
If  sleeping,  wake— if  feasting,  rise  before 
I  turn  away.    It  is  the  hour  of  fate, 
And  they  who  follow  me  reach  every  state 
Mortals  desire,  and  conquer  every  foe 
87 


88   SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Save  death ;  but  those  who  doubt  or  hesitate, 
Condemned  to  failure,  penury,  and  woe, 
Seek  me  in  vain  and  uselessly  implore. 
I  answer  not,  and  I  return  no  more ! 

• 

General  Funston,  when  opportunity  has  knocked,  if 
sleeping,  has  awoke,  and  if  feasting,  has  risen,  and  fol 
lowed  without  fear  and  without  hesitation. 

The  first  occupation  that  seemed  obnoxious  enough  to 
be  attractive  to  the  General  was  going  off  into  Death 
Valley  in  southern  California.  There  is  the  hottest 
spot  in  the  United  States,  away  below  the  level  of  the 
sea,  and  there  for  nine  long  months  this  young  man 
searched  in  vain  for  the  water  of  life,  risked  his  health, 
measured  the  gentle  heat  of  147,  the  hottest  official 
measurement  ever  taken,  and  made  for  his  country  a 
report  which  is  the  best  on  record  to-day  about  that 
valley.  Coming  out  of  Death  Valley,  I  suppose  in 
order  to  get  a  good  average  as  to  temperature,  he  went 
to  Alaska.  For  two  years  he  stayed  in  the  frozen 
North.  He  traveled  on  snow-shoes  1100  miles,  farther 
than  from  here  to  Chicago.  If  you  see  him  now  on 
Fifth  Avenue,  walking  with  a  peculiar  gait,  you  may 
know  that  he  is  neither  groggy  nor  proud.  It  is  the 
old  snow-shoe  gait,  that  comes  back  to  him  occasionally. 
One  of  these  snow-shoe  trips  from  his  camp  to  Herschel 
Land  occupied  forty-nine  days,  and  no  man  that  he 
met  had  ever  before  seen  a  white  man 's  face.  When  he 
tired  of  walking  on  snow-shoes  in  Alaska,  he  took  to  the 
canoe,  and  he  paddled  all  alone  on  those  wild  rivers 
2300  miles  on  one  trip,  from  the  head  of  the  Yukon  to 
the  mouth  of  that  magnificent  river. 

Finally  he  came  to  me  in  New  York  and  said:  "I 
have  enlisted."  I  said:  "In  what?"  He  said:  "The 


CHARLES   S.   GLEED  89 

Cuban  army."  I  said:  "How  do  you  know?"  And 
he  said :  "  I  found  an  office  down  here  in  a  dark  corner, 
and  I  enlisted."  I  said:  "What  for?"  And  here  is 
the  point — I  never  knew  him  to  do  anything  for  ad 
venture  ;  there  is  always  a  purpose.  He  said :  '  *  That 
job  down  there  has  got  to  be  cleaned  up. "  I  said  :  "  Do 
you  think  you  can  clean  it  up?"  He  said:  "I  can 
help."  So  inside  of  a  week  he  was  over  there  on 
Third  Avenue  in  a  garret  every  night  drilling  soldiers ; 
he  had  a  Falstaffian  army,  and  one  big  Hotchkiss  gun. 
He  and  five  other  boys  wTent  on  the  Dauntless  to  Cuba. 
Those  other  five  American  boys  are  dead.  He  landed 
in  Cuba,  and  before  he  had  been  there  a  week  he  had 
been  in  about  fiftj^-five  fights,  and  they  had  put  a 
Mauser  bullet  through  him ;  they  had  helped  themselves 
to  a  piece  of  his  arm,  and  finally  a  treacherous  Spanish 
horse  fell  on  him  and  rolled  a  piece  of  a  tree  into  his 
leg.  About  the  time  that  happened  he  had  been  com 
missioned  by  Garcia  and  Gomez  as  lieutenant-colonel 
in  the  Cuban  army ;  he  had  risen  from  a  captaincy  to  a 
place  as  lieutenant-colonel.  When  he  was  useless  they 
told  him  he  might  go  home,  and  he  started  for  the 
coast.  He  was  walking  along  with  a  friend  named 
Penny,  when  suddenly  he  saw  a  cluster  of  Spanish  guns 
stuck  in  his  face.  Having  taken  the  precaution  to  learn 
Spanish  out  in  Kansas,  he  immediately  opened  up  con 
versation  and  said  he  wanted  to  surrender,  and  I  guess 
he  spoke  the  truth  if  he  ever  did.  They  let  him  sur 
render,  and  started  for  headquarters.  He  had  a  severe 
attack  of  coughing  and  smuggled  some  despatches  into 
his  mouth,  and  they  got  down  into  his  stomach,  and  I 
guess  he  would  make  affidavit  that  he  has  eaten  many 
a  worse  meal  than  that.  They  at  first  thought  they 


90  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

would  shoot  him,  but  finally  turned  him  over  to  Fitz- 
hugh  Lee,  who  sent  him  back  to  New  York.  I  wish  you 
could  have  seen  him  then  on  Fifth  Avenue ;  he  was  thin 
and  emaciated,  with  ice-cream  clothes  and  a  straw  hat ; 
and  it  was  cold  weather.  He  turned  himself  over  to  the 
surgeon  and  the  tailor,  and  they  tried  clothes  on  him; 
and  when  he  was  all  right  he  went  into  the  lecture  busi 
ness,  and  I  know  he  was  successful  for  Major  Pond 
has  been  trying  to  get  him  back  ever  since.  But  pretty 
soon  the  big  war  came  and  the  lecturer  went,  and  we 
heard  of  him  in  the  Philippines,  as  colonel  in  fifteen 
battles,  and  as  brigadier-general  in  three,  and  on  his 
return  from  his  visit  to  the  United  States,  in  twenty 
more ;  they  only  got  him  once,  and  that  was  through  the 
hand  with  a  bullet.  Before  he  left  there,  that  Agui- 
naldo  of  the  human  system,  the  vermiform  appendix, 
got  hold  of  him,  and  the  surgeon  went  in  and  took  it 
out,  but  in  the  excitement  of  the  moment  he  left  a 
monkey-wrench  or  something  inside,  and  so  it  had  to 
be  done  over  again  when  he  got  here. 

The  question  who  is  brave  we  cannot  settle ;  the  ques 
tion  why  one  is  brave  and  another  a  coward  we  cannot 
settle.  "We  do  not  know  who  is  the  bravest  man  among 
our  friends ;  we  cannot  tell  where  the  greatest  courage 
lies.  God  made  that  scheme;  we  have  nothing  to  do 
with  it;  we  cannot  go  behind  the  returns.  All  we  can 
do  is  to  do  as  we  do  with  the  precious  metals,  take  them 
as  we  find  them,  and  we  know  that  the  courage  which 
General  Funston  has  shown  excuses  him  for  any  good 
luck  he  has  had,  and  that  is  why  we  praise  and  applaud 
and  admire  him,  and  why  we  hope  and  pray  that  the 
youth  of  the  United  States  will  emulate  his  example. 


JOSEPH  B.  COGHLAN 

(REAR-ADMIRAL,  UNITED  STATES  NAVY) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  FREDERICK  FUNSTON, 
MARCH  8,  1902 

I  CAME  here  with  a  great  deal  of  pleasure  this  eve 
ning,  because,  as  you  know,  General  Funston  be 
longs  to  the  Navy  as  well  as  to  the  Army.  We  own  him 
in  one  way,  that  is,  we  are  personally  interested  in  all 
his  experiences  out  there,  as  we  were  the  pioneers  that 
drove  the  pick  that  made  the  hole  to  let  him  get  in. 

Just  about  the  time  we  were  to  sail  from  Manila,  a 
tug  came  out  from  Hong-Kong  with,  I  think,  seven 
Filipinos,  who  called  themselves  officers  and  members 
of  the  cabinet,  and  I  don't  know  what.  They  invited 
the  admiral  to  wait  two  or  three  days,  until  they  could 
get  clean  clothes.  They  promised  us  everything  on 
earth,  and  they  were  going  to  raise  a  lot  of  the  islands 
in  our  favor.  I  am  very  glad  to  say  here  that  I  heard 
Admiral  Dewey  refuse  positively  to  make  any  promise 
of  any  description  to  the  Filipinos.  I  remember  very 
distinctly— and  his  language  was  somewhat  emphatic, 
as  sailors'  language  sometimes  is;  he  struck  the  table, 
and  said:  "I  will  be  damned  if  I  promise  anything; 
naval  officers  are  not  here  for  the  purpose  of  entering 
into  treaties  of  any  description  with  any  power  what 
ever.  Our  duty  is  simply  to  see  that  no  foreign  power 
interferes  with  us. ' ' 

91 


92  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

But  after  about  an  hour  and  a  half  the  admiral  got 
tired  and  said :  * '  Let  's  end  this  foolishness ;  gentlemen, 
you  will  prepare  to  get  under  way  at  two  o  'clock. ' ' 

That  is  all  I  have  to  tell  you  in  which  I  use  the 
pronoun  "  I. " 

When  it  came  to  our  part  of  the  work,  I  think  you 
will  agree  with  me  that  there  was  but  one  man  in  the 
business  who  deserved  the  whole  credit,  and  that  was 
Admiral  Dewey. 

I  am  very  glad,  indeed,  to  be  with  you  all  this  eve 
ning;  particularly  on  the  occasion  of  honoring  the 
General.  We  do  it,  I  suppose,  you  the  same  as  myself, 
because  he  has  shown  a  very  high  type  of  courage.  We 
all  have  courage— everybody  is  brave— but  it  is  in  dif 
ferent  degrees.  The  General  represents  what  we  regard 
as  our  ideal  brave  man.  He  not  only  knows  and  takes 
into  consideration  everything  that  has  to  be  done,  the 
dangers,  and  weighs  them  pro  and  con,  but  if  he  sees 
the  slightest  chance,  where  there  may  be  but  one  chance 
in  a  hundred,  he  is  brave  enough  to  take  that  chance, 
knowing  that  he  will  so  direct  it  that  everything  will 
go  well. 


HORACE  PORTER 

(AMERICAN  AMBASSADOR  TO  THE  REPUBLIC  OF  FRANCE) 
AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  JUNE  17,  1902 

TTTHEN  I  was  spoken  to  about  your  doing  me  the 
T  T  honor  of  giving  me  a  dinner  in  this  club,  I  said: 
"It  is  summer,  and  everybody  is  out  of  town ' ' ;  but 
I  could  n't  object  to  that,  for  I  have  been  out  of  town 
myself  for  some  time.  When  one  has  been  away  for 
a  period  of  time  one  quarter  that  of  Rip  Van  Winkle's 
sleep,  he  becomes  reminiscent;  and  it  is  dangerous  at 
this  hour  of  the  evening  to  ask  him  to  indulge  in  that 
form  of  human  speech  embraced  under  the  head  of  a 
few  remarks.  But  I  thank  you  for  the  cordiality  of 
your  reception  this  evening.  It  is  the  most  enthusiastic 
I  have  ever  seen,  except  in  a  Western  meeting,  when  the 
audience  rose  to  its  feet  and  vociferously  applauded 
the  opening  prayer. 

I  am  glad  to  come  here  and  meet  my  old  friends,  and 
to  meet  some  new  ones;  but  some  in  New  York  have 
changed  so  much  that  they  don't  know  me.  I  met  a 
gentleman  down-town  the  other  day,  and  he  said:  "I 
have  heard  you  spoken  of."  There  is  nothing  more 
flattering  to  human  vanity  than  to  hear,  ' '  I  have  heard 
you  spoken  of."  It  does  n't  matter  what  was  said 
about  you.  I  remember  once  being  present  when  two 

93 


94  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

rival  politicians  who  had  agreed  to  speak  at  a  reception 
in  a  country  town,  or  I  should  say  at  a  little  convention, 
met.  One  said  to  the  other,  in  acknowledging  the  in 
troduction,  ' '  I  have  often  heard  you  spoken  of,  sir,  but 
I  have  never  seen  you  before,"  to  which  the  other  re 
torted,  "I  have  often  seen  you,  but  I  have  never  heard 
you  spoken  of. ' ' 

Now,  I  am  glad  about  a  great  many  things.  I  am 
glad,  first,  to  see  my  dear  old  friend,  your  perpetual 
president,  in  the  chair.  After  I  had  been  six  years  or 
more  president  of  the  Union  League  Club,  up  to  the 
time  I  left,  a  member  made  the  remark,  I  don't  know 
whether  he  intended  it  as  complimentary  or  the  re 
verse,  that  they  had  had  to  intercede  with  the  Govern 
ment  and  get  them  to  send  me  abroad  to  get  me  out  of 
the  presidency  of  the  club.  That  is  a  good  precedent, 
and  you  will  have  to  intercede  with  some  one  to  get  Mr. 
Lawrence  sent  abroad  to  service  at  hard  labor  and 
transportation  for  a  number  of  years,  to  prevent  his 
being  the  perpetual  president  of  this  club. 

I  was  glad  to  see  him  swing  the  gavel  here  to-night. 
Now  the  gavel  is  essentially  American,  and  does  n't 
exist  in  France.  I  told  them  over  there  that  it  was  in 
vented  for  the  use  of  railway  conductors,  so  that  they 
could  go  around  after  an  accident  and  hit  the  wounded 
on  the  head  with  it,  because  the  limit  of  recovery  then 
for  a  death  was  $5000,  but  there  was  no  limit  for  the 
damages  to  the  wounded. 

One  of  the  first  things  I  did  in  France  was  to  preside 
at  a  Fourth  of  July  banquet,  and  when  I  arose  there 
were  five  hundred  people  out  of  order,  and  I  had 
nothing  to  call  them  to  order  with— there  was  no  gavel. 


HORACE  PORTER  95 

Even  the  president  of  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  has  no 
gavel,  and  when  he  wants  to  call  them  to  order  he  rings 
a  bell;  and  if  they  make  too  much  noise  he  goes  out 
and  buys  a  larger  bell.  Well,  I  had  to  have  something 
to  rap  for  order  with,  and  I  took  an  empty  bottle  and 
rapped  them  to  order  with  that.  I  told  them  that  in 
America  we  called  an  empty  bottle  a  corpse.  There 
were  quite  a  lot  of  Americans  there,  and  word  was 
passed  around  that  I  had  used  a  corpse  for  this  pur 
pose,  and  the  next  morning  a  French  paper  printed  the 
story  and  said,  "What  people  those  Americans  are! 
They  even  use  the  gruesome  contents  of  their  cemeteries 
to  enliven  their  feasts." 

Now  I  come  back  to  our  city.  I  left  it  clothed  in  all 
the  beauty  of  maidenhood.  I  come  back  to  see  it  a 
series  of  bruises,  about  as  bad  as  the  city  of  Washing 
ton  when  Governor  Shepard  was  trying  to  revamp  it, 
and  tore  up  the  streets  and  left  the  houses  standing  up 
in  the  air.  We  had  a  Japanese  charge  d'affaires  at 
that  time,  the  first  one  who  came  here;  and  he  came 
down  to  invite  the  Secretary  of  War  and  me  to  dine 
with  him,  as  he  put  it,  in  a  hotel,  a  restaurant  "high 
up,  big  mud,  damn  hard  get  at."  That  is  about  the 
condition  in  which  I  find  the  city  of  New  York,  and 
when  the  dust  assailed  my  eyes  I  wondered  if  some 
smart  American  woman  here  could  n't  write  a  verse, 
something  like  the  verse  written  by  an  American  woman 
in  Paris,  which  runs  thus : 

The  devil  sends  the  wicked  wind 
Which  blows  our  skirts  knee  high ; 

But  God  is  just,  and  sends  the  dust, 
Which  gets  in  the  bad  man's  eye. 


96  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

When  I  went  abroad  I  changed  my  habits.  I  under 
went  a  change  of  life.  Brought  up  in  the  Army,  I  went 
into  diplomacy.  I  spent  the  earlier  part  of  iny  life 
trying  to  make  men  downright,  and  now  I  am  trying  to 
make  them  upright.  I  was  glad,  in  common  with  all 
other  diplomats,  to  see  the  Navy  grow  in  size.  It  is  a 
good  thing  to  have  a  navy  at  your  back  just  to  coincide. 
There  was  a  great  discussion  here  in  the  time  of  the 
Spanish  War  as  to  the  coal-supply.  Now  we  had  no 
trouble  on  that  score,  did  n't  have  any  trouble  about 
it  at  all;  the  American  people  would  always  find  an 
ample  supply  in  the  coal-hole  of  the  Lotos  Club. 

Well,  they  can't  understand  us  on  the  other  side  of 
the  water.  They  know  we  are  a  progressive  people; 
they  know  we  are  always  looking  after  business,  and 
that  if  we  have  large  families  we  expect  children  to 
begin  to  pay  dividends  at  two  years  of  age.  They  think 
that  we  are  a  mass  of  contrarieties  and  contradictions. 
They  see  how  we  have  taken  the  negro,  who  is  naturally 
an  agriculturist,  and  made  a  soldier  of  him;  and  how 
we  have  taken  the  Indian,  who  is  by  nature  a  warrior, 
and  made  a  farmer  of  him.  We  have  insisted  upon 
using  as  our  standard  of  money  the  yellow  metal  for 
the  white  races,  and  winked  at  the  use  of  the  white 
metal  for  the  yellow  races. 

I  wonder  what  your  president  alluded  to  a  little 
while  ago.  I  had  a  great  struggle  over  there  on  the 
tariff  question  and  the  copyright  law,  trying  to  intro 
duce  Armour's  pork  from  Chicago,  with  Mark  Twain's 
works,  and  other  products  of  the  pen.  Evidently  that 
is  what  the  president  alluded  to  when  he  spoke  of 


HORACE  PORTER  97 

me  a  little  while  ago  as  "only  an  armor-bearer"  in 
France. 

Well,  it  is  a  good  thing  to  get  back  here  again.  What 
a  country  to  come  to!  See  this  matchless  prosperity, 
the  marvelous  inventions,  the  remarkable  discoveries  in 
science,  the  onward  march  of  civilization,  which  in 
spires  us  with  the  grandeur  of  its  achievements.  What 
a  country !  It  was  not  born  amid  the  fabled  tales  and 
mysticisms  of  bygone  days,  but  it  is  planted  here  on 
virgin  soil,  the  only  country  that  knows  its  own  birth 
day.  I  am  always  glad  to  get  back  here  and  to  see  my 
old  friends  of  the  Lotos  Club.  .We  formerly  used  to 
try  to  kill  time,  and  now  we  are  trying  to  prevent  time 
from  killing  us.  We  are  all  trying  to  grow  old  grace 
fully,  and  it  is  a  great  enjoyment  to  come  back  here 
and  see  our  president  sitting  here  with  Mark  Twain— 
he  went  to  Europe  to  practise  German,  and  I  French. 
I  took  French  because  the  verb  is  a  little  nearer  the 
other  part  of  the  sentence ;  it  is  not  so  long  drawn  out. 
Why,  they  know  Mark  Twain  just  as  well  over  there 
as  you  do.  There  is  n't  a  man  there  who  would  n't 
rather  have  a  photograph  of  one  of  his  jokes  than  a 
negative  of  any  other  man. 

General  Brooke  has  captured  everything  in  any  di 
rection,  and  now  the  Lotos  Club  has  captured  him. 
John  S.  Wise  is  one  of  the  numerous  carpet-baggers 
from  the  South.  I  knew  him  in  Virginia;  we  fought 
together,  not  on  the  same  side  though,  and  he  kept  at  it 
till  the  last,  still  fighting  for  the  things  he  considered 
were  his  rights,  and  a  braver  soldier  never  lived.  I  am 
proud  to  have  him  sitting  here  to-night. 


98  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

I  could  go  on  and  name  all  our  old  friends  here,  their 
characteristics  and  qualities,  lovable  and  dear.  We  are 
coming  to  grow  old  together,  comfortably  and  grace 
fully,  though  our  heads  don't  silver  rapidly.  But  we 
are  not  yet  in  the  shadow  of  life's  decay,  and  if  we 
can't  clasp  hands  across  the  sea,  we  can  always  clasp 
hands  across  the  table. 


SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  HOKACE  POETEE, 
JUNE  17,  1902 

THE  chairman  has  told  the  truth.  He  has  n't  had 
much  practice,  but  he  did  it  this  time.  I  did  say 
that  I  should  be  very  glad  indeed  to  say  something  in 
case  anybody  preceding  me  should  furnish  me  a  text. 
That  anybody  preceding  me  should  furnish  you  statis 
tics  that  need  to  be  corrected,  or  facts  of  any  kind  that 
seemed  feasible  things,  did  not  occur  to  me.  It  is  my 
line  to  correct  them.  I  have  stood  for  truth  all  my  life. 
I  have  been  a  sort  of  symbol  of  veracity,  and  it  has  not 
always  been  recognized.  But  there  have  been  things 
said  to-night  which  furnish  me  here  and  there  a  text, 
and  they  are  pleasing  texts.  I  don't  see  that  I  have 
any  real  fault  to  find  with  anything  that  I  have  heard. 
I  did  n't  quite  like  to  hear  men  whose  heads  are  still 
brown,  like  the  chairman's,  and  black,  like  the  guest's, 
talk  too  much  of  people  who  have  been  in  this  club 
longer  than  they  have,  meaning  me.  And  to  hear  them 
calling  your  distinct  attention  to  the  stuff  which  I 
wear  upon  my  head  and  which  has  been  tanned  to  its 
present  tone  by  hard  work  in  the  interest  of  civiliza 
tion  !  I  have  first  to  correct  an  opinion  of  the  guest  of 
the  evening,  as  everybody  can  have  an  opinion.  Compli 
ments  are  paid  to  him  in  a  gracious  way,  and  in  a 
truthful  and  righteous  way,  the  way  in  which  Mr.  Law- 

99 


100  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

rence  has  turned  these  compliments,  when  he  speaks  of 
this  brilliant  bird  of  passage  from  the  coal-hole  of  the 
Lotos  Club.  I  like  to  hear  him  pay  these  compliments. 
I  like  to  see  the  chairman  show  off  what  he  can  do  with 
language.  And  I  like  to  see  him  throw  out  his  culture 
and  his  knowledge  in  this  mysterious  way,  and  talk 
about  the  date  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill  just  as  if  he 
was  there  and  knew  all  about  it.  He  throws  out  this  his 
torical  information  with  a  scandalous  air  of  having  it 
always  on  tap.  He  has  been  studying  a  cyclopedia  to 
day.  There  was  a  man  here  who  knew  the  date  of  the 
battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  I  don't  take  these  random 
historians  at  par.  I  shall  look  myself  when  I  get  home, 
and  see  if  they  're  right. 

Why,  General  Porter  stands  up  here,  and  he  also 
throws  out  very  nice  things,  and  sometimes  they  sug 
gest  Wagner's  music  from  the  pen  and  point  of  view 
of  Bill  Nye.  Bill  Nye  said  that  he  had  heard  that 
Wagner's  music  was  better  than  it  sounded.  You  can 
take  what  General  Porter  says  in  the  same  way.  Now 
he  has  been  abroad  over  five  years,  and  has  been  work 
ing  in  my  interest  and  Mr.  Armour's  interest,  trying 
to  get  our  literature  introduced,  our  pork  from  the  pen. 
Well,  that  is  a  good  thing  to  do,  and  he  has  been  and  is 
working  very  hard,  and  has  done  admirably  well.  He 
has  sold  more  than  forty  copies  of  my  works  in  France 
every  year,  and  it  was  only  half  that  when  he  went 
away.  He  has  done  exceedingly  well.  We  have  never 
had  a  representative  there  who  has  done  his  work  more 
to  my  satisfaction  than  General  Porter. 

And  he  has  been  learning  French.  I  wish  he  had 
made  his  speech  in  French.  Not  because  any  one  would 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  101 

have  understood  it,  I  could  not  have  understood  my 
share,  perhaps.  But  I  should  like  to  hear  him.  I  think 
General  Porter  did  know  French  before  he  went  away. 
He  has  complimented  me  on  my  study  of  the  German 
language ;  I  think  I  did  yeoman  service  in  trying  to  tame 
that  language.  I  had  not  the  same  success  with  it  that 
he  had  with  the  French.  I  have  great  reverence  for  the 
German  language.  I  did  the  best  I  could  with  it.  I 
stood  by  it  many  years.  I  worked  it  hard  and  it 
worked  me  hard.  There  were  many  pleasant  incidents 
connected  with  the  struggle.  We  had  a  very  dear  old 
lady,  a  sweet  old  soul,  who  took  a  great  fancy  to  a 
young  lady  who  was  traveling  with  us.  She  took  so 
strong  a  fancy  to  that  young  American  woman,  that 
she  poured  out  her  practical  German  affection  upon 
her,  and  she  could  n't  say  too  much,  or  find  too  much 
praise  in  that  young  person  and  everything  connected 
with  her.  And  this  dear  old  lady  was  always  trying  to 
find  similarities  between  the  Germans  and  the  Ameri 
cans,  and  was  always  delighted  when  she  could  show 
a  sort  of  relationship  in  methods  of  expression  and  feel 
ings.  And  she  said  one  day,  "Why,  you  talk  the  same 
as  we  talk.  We  say,  'Ach  Gott,'  and  you  say,  'God 
damn.'" 

But  the  remarks  of  Admiral  Barker  carry  me  back 
to  the  time  when  I  was  in  Austria.  That  was  the  time 
when  the  war  broke  out.  It  was  threatening  daily,  that 
Spanish  War,  and  the  admiral  says  that  Americans  are 
more  comfortable  there  on  the  other  side,  and  are  now 
treated  with  higher  regard  than  they  were  at  any  earlier 
time.  It  is  no  doubt  true.  At  the  time  I  speak  of,  1898, 
Americans  who  were  sojourning  in  Vienna  had  a  sufii- 


102  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ciently  uncomfortable  time,  for  it  was  said,  it  came 
from  America,  that  we  were  going  to  fight  Spain  for 
Cuba's  sake,  and  that  our  sole  reason  for  that  was  the 
humanitarian  one  that  we  were  going  to  put  forth 
our  strength  to  achieve  the  freedom  of  the  down 
trodden  Cubans,  and  that  we  should  not  charge  any 
thing  for  that,  but  would  do  it  simply  from  our  Ameri 
can  principle  of  standing  by  weak  nations  who  were 
struggling  for  their  freedom,  and  ask  nothing  for  that 
but  the  consciousness  of  doing  this  thing.  They  thought 
we  were  too  selfish  to  pour  out  blood  and  treasure  for 
that  cause.  I  had  to  stand  hearing  people  say  in  all 
kinds  of  German,  with  languages  mixed,  that  that  was 
all  nonsense,  folly,  romance,  humbug,  that  we  had  an 
ulterior  motive  for  that  war,  and  that  our  humanitarian 
purpose  was  a  mere  pretense.  I  had  to  stand  all  that. 
Everybody  in  that  country  had  to  stand  that,  and  put 
up  with  that.  It  was  hard  enough,  because  I  believed 
thoroughly  that  we  had  no  object  in  view  but  the  high 
and  noble  one  of  setting  that  people  free.  And  I  said 
it;  and  I  instructed  the  young  American  people, 
younger  than  I  was,  and  we  were  in  trouble,  and  met 
with  scoffs  on  all  hands,  and  jeers.  And  I  strengthened 
them,  and  I  said  to  them,  ' l  Don 't  you  be  afraid.  It  is 
all  true,  absolutely  true.  Speak  out  and  say  so.  These 
people  don't  understand  fighting  for  any  such  pur 
pose  as  this,  but  we  understand  it,  and  we  do  it.  Stand 
by  your  flag  and  don't  be  afraid." 

We  went  all  through  that  and  we  have  waited  to  see 
the  result,  and  now  I  should  like  to  stand  in  Vienna 
and  say,  "See  what  we  have  done.  We  have  done 
everything.  We  have  kept  our  word.  We  set  those 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  103 

Cubans  free.  We  said  we  should  do  it  and  we  did  it." 
If  there  is  anything  in  this  world  we  have  to  be  proud 
of  for  a  long  time,  it  is  that  fact.  I  am  glad  I  have 
lived  long  enough  to  be  able  to  say  to  those  Viennese 
that  I  was  right  and  they  were  wrong. 

General  Porter  has  done  a  great  many  things  to  be 
proud  of;  and  a  great  many  things  for  which  we  have 
reason  to  be  proud  of  him.  More  than  one  of  you 
have  understood  in  one  way  or  another  what  General 
Porter  has  accomplished  in  that  short  life  which  has 
resulted  in  that  black  head  of  his.  Men  get  older 
some  time  or  another.  All  of  you  know  how  brilliant  he 
is.  He  should  have  a  school.  He  has  done  some  meri 
torious  things,  but  you  have  n't  heard  of  the  greatest 
victory  he  ever  won,  on  the  battle-fields  or  in  the 
diplomacy  of  Paris  over  wise  men.  I  saw  him  put  to  a 
test  one  night  that  would  have  taxed  any  other  man 
severely.  He  saw  it  through,  and  I  should  tell  about 
that  for  his  everlasting  credit. 

Fifteen  or  twenty-five  years  ago  the  Fellowcraft  Club 
was  formed.  They  had  sixty-five  members,  and  they 
held  one  meeting  very  successfully  that  I  remember. 
At  this  meeting  Mr.  Gilder  was  chairman,  and  just  for 
fun  I  made  a  proposition.  I  got  Major  Pond  to  say  to 
Mr.  Gilder  that  there  was  a  young  man  here  from  down 
South  who  had  a  plan  by  which  he  proposed  to  teach 
young  men  how  to  make  after-dinner  speeches  without 
any  preparation.  He  would  teach  them  how  to  choose 
any  subject,  take  any  text,  and  speak  to  that  text  with 
out  embarrassment  of  any  kind.  Mr.  Gilder  did  n't 
want  to  introduce  this  young  person,  but  he  was  per 
suaded  to  do  so.  Major  Pond  said  that  this  man's  name 


104  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

was  Samuel  Langhorne— Langhorne  is  part  of  my  name 
—and  when  he  stated  what  this  man's  name  was,  he  said 
he  hoped  the  club  would  call  for  Mr.  Langhorne.  And 
then  Mr.  Gilder  called  it  out.  I  stepped  forward. 

I  said:  "There  is  no  swindle  about  this,  Langhorne 
is  part  of  my  name. ' '  I  wanted  to  try  this  project,  and 
I  wanted  to  take  a  class  to  teach  people  after-dinner 
speaking.  I  wanted  to  try  it  on  the  dog,  as  the  actors 
say,  and  I  wanted  to  make  the  experiment  there.  My 
scheme  was  this,  and  it  is  based  on  this,  that,  as  a  rule, 
after-dinner  speeches  seem  to  me  to  consist  of  anec 
dotes,  and  remarks  attached.  From  observation  it 
seemed  to  me  that  the  anecdotes  are  made  for  the 
speaker,  and  just  this.  A  man  gets  up  on  his  feet  to 
make  a  speech,  and  he  talks  along  and  talks  very  hand 
somely.  Presently  he  approaches  an  anecdote.  You 
can  see  it  in  the  air.  You  can  smell  it.  And  presently 
he  says,  "Now,  how  felicitously  what  I  have  just  been 
saying  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  the  man  who,"  and 
then  he  tells  the  anecdote,  and  those  people  are  caught, 
and  they  laugh,  and  the  thing  goes  off,  and  it  does  n't 
occur  to  them  that  that  anecdote  did  n't  illustrate  a 
thing.  But  that  does  n't  matter,  he  talks  along,  and 
presently  he  brings  out  another  anecdote,  and  they  still 
don't  notice  that  it  does  n't  illustrate,  and  the  man  goes 
on  and  takes  out  these  anecdotes,  and  the  people  go 
home.  And  after  all,  his  anecdotes  never  illustrated 
anything  he  had  to  say.  And  then  I  got  those  people 
to  give  me  a  text,  to  show  them  what  I  could  do  with  it. 
And  I  asked  them  to  send  around  a  hat,  and  have  every 
body  propose  a  text.  I  said  it  would  make  no  difference 
what  the  text  was,  one  was  just  as  good  as  another  on 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  105 

this  plan.  And  after  that  they  sent  a  hat  around  and 
somebody  reached  in  and  got  one  out. 

The  text  I  got  out  was  portrait-painting.  Well,  it 
was  n  't  much  of  a  text,  considering  what  I  knew  about 
that  subject.  But  I  said  that  would  do,  one  was  just 
as  good  as  another.  And  then  I  began  to  deliver  the 
facts  and  the  history  about  it,  starting  back  to  the 
primeval  man  who  sketched  the  mammoth,  and  so  on, 
and  every  now  and  then  I  dropped  in  an  anecdote.  I 
always  said,  you  can  see  how  felicitously  what  I  have 
just  said  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of  the  man  who, 
and  I  went  right  along. 

Now  you  see  the  whole  scheme.  Everybody  here 
ought  to  be  able  to  act  on  this  line.  He  must  have  his 
anecdote  ready,  and  he  must  always  remember  to  say, 
1 '  You  see  how  felicitously  this  is  illustrated  in  the  case 
of  the  man  who." 

There  was  n't  a  man  there  who  got  through  his  speech, 
because  he  never  got  to  an  anecdote  without  all  those 
people  jumping  in  to  help  him  out,  until  it  got  to  Gen 
eral  Porter.  And  General  Porter  stood  up  there,  and 
told  nineteen  anecdotes.  They  tried  to  shut  him  off,  to 
shout  him  down,  but  they  could  n't  do  it.  He  intro 
duced  each  one  by  saying,  "You  see  how  felicitously 
what  I  have  just  been  saying  is  illustrated  in  the  case  of 
the  man  who."  There  never  was  so  much  courage 
exhibited.  He  took  a  text  himself,  that  "Truth  is 
stranger  than  Fiction."  He  did  n't  illustrate  it  in  a 
single  instance.  He  always  said  he  did,  and  it  always 
carried,  and  he  finished  it  most  happily.  Now  all  the 
anecdotes  had  been  told  before,  taken  from  here  and 
there.  And  General  Porter  said  it  was  true  from  his 


106  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

own  personal  experience.  He  said  he  made  a  voyage 
across  the  Atlantic,  a  very  stormy  voyage.  You  see 
how  he  handled  the  thing,  and  he  had  the  people's  hair 
standing  on  end  about  the  dangers,  and  he  got  up  on 
that,  that  the  ship  was  leaking  and  they  had  to  keep  at 
the  pumps  all  the  time,  day  and  night,  all  the  way. 
And  then  he  wound  up,  "Why,  we  pumped  the  Atlan 
tic  Ocean  through  her  sixteen  times."  That  was  his 
idea  of  truth  being  stranger  than  fiction.  Everybody 
could  see  that  it  was.  I  have  immense  admiration  for 
General  Porter.  I  have  more  admiration  for  him  than 
I  have  for  the  tax  assessor  of  Tarrytown. 

The  tax  assessors  of  Tarrytown  understand  their 
business  better  than  anybody  else.  There  are  Tarry- 
town  people  here  to-night.  The  way  those  tax  asses 
sors  work  is  that  in  order  to  verify  their  figures  they 
find  out  what  the  fellow  is  worth,  and  multiply  it  by 
fifty-seven.  They  would  tax  Porter  on  his  personal 
appearance  if  he  lived  there.  Oh,  I  am  going  to  have  a 
time  up  there.  I  am  up  there,  and  I  have  got  to  put 
an  addition  on  that  place.  I  have  got  to  get  a 
chicken-coop,  and  you  can't  have  a  chicken-coop  in 
Tarrytown  without  risking  something.  I  am  going  to 
build  that  one  of  chilled  iron.  I  am  going  to  save  the 
coop  itself  when  the  assessor  comes.  I  don't  propose 
to  get  taken  up.  It  is  a  great  place.  I  am  enjoying 
the  prospect  of  going  there.  I  have  n't  got  there  yet. 
It  's  a  great  place.  It  has  a  lower  death-rate  and  a 
higher  tax-rate  than  any  place  on  the  civilized  globe. 

But  I  welcome  General  Porter  back  to  his  native 
shore.  I  welcome  him  with  all  my  heart.  I  have  a 
reverent  affection  for  him,  and  this  feeling  has  grown 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  107 

with  the  years  during  which  I  have  observed  him.  He 
grows  in  my  estimation  all  the  time.  I  have  a  great 
opinion  of  his  abilities,  and  a  great  opinion  of  his 
career  as  he  has  made  it,  and  great  hope  that  he  will 
make  it  greater  in  the  future.  And  if  next  time  I  don't 
have  an  opportunity  to  vote  for  Theodore  Roosevelt  for 
President,  I  hope  to  vote  for  Porter. 


CHOWFA  MAHA  VAJIRAVUDH 

(CROWN  PRINCE  OF  SIAM) 
AT   THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  OCTOBEE  25,   1902 

I  MUST  thank  you  very  much  for  having  honored  my 
toast,  and  I  assure  you  that  I  appreciate  very  much 
the  honor  you  have  done  me  in  giving  me  this  most 
excellent  dinner.  I  find  a  very  long  list  of  distinguished 
strangers  who  have  already  been  entertained  here, 
and  I  am  pleased  to  be  among  them.  I  have  been  only 
a  short  time  in  the  United  States,  only  a  fortnight,  and 
I  have  scarcely  had  time  to  know  the  country  well. 
But  I  have  heard  a  great  deal,  of  course;  it  is  only 
natural  that  I  should  have  heard  of  America,  this 
country  which  we  are  very  glad  to  have  as  our  neigh 
bor. 

Gentlemen,  it  takes  at  least  two  to  make  good  neigh 
bors.  I  can  assure  the  American  people,  if  they  will 
be  good  neighbors  to  us,  we  will  be  as  much  to  them. 
We  are  proud  of  our  country,  which  we  always  call  the 
land  of  the  free,  and  in  that  way  we  think  we  have  a 
great  many  ideas  in  common  with  the  people  of  the 
United  States.  Although  our  King  is  an  absolute  mon 
arch,  he  rules  by  the  will  of  the  people,  and  he  appre 
ciates  very  much  the  trust  that  his  people  have  placed 
in  him;  and  I  am  sure  that  we,  his  successors,  shall 
always  do  our  best  to  keep  up  the  traditions  of  our 

108 


CHOWFA  MAHA  VAJIRAVUDH       109 

family  and  be  equally  worthy  of  the  trust  which  the 
nation  places  in  us.  We  wish  always,  naturally,  to 
make  our  country  the  land  of  the  free,  and  in  this  we 
look  to  the  cooperation  of  our  neighbors,  and  prin 
cipally  of  our  new  neighbor,  our  newest  neighbor,  the 
United  States.  There  are  a  great  many  ways  in  which 
the  United  States  can  help  us,  principally  by  way  of 
commerce.  I  hope  very  soon  to  see  commerce  better 
established  between  our  country  and  this  country. 

I  am  very  glad  to  be  here,  as  I  am  sure  it  will  be  the 
means,  or,  at  least,  one  of  the  means,  of  making  the 
people  of  this  country  look,  turn  their  eyes,  toward  Asia 
and  toward  us.  And  if  I  have  done  that,  I  shall  feel 
that  my  absence  from  my  country  for  nine  years  has 
not  been  in  vain.  I  have  received  a  very  warm  welcome 
from  the  American  people  wherever  I  have  been,  and 
I  have  received  a  great  deal  of  attention  on  all  sides, 
especially  from  the  press  of  the  country.  All  this  at 
tention,  I  assure  you,  I  appreciate  very  much,  and  I 
shall  carry  away  with  me  very  pleasant  recollections  of 
my  tour  in  the  United  States ;  and  among  the  pleasant- 
est  recollections  will  be  the  dinner  at  the  Lotos  Club. 


PEINCE  CHOWFA  CHAKRABONGSE 
OF  SIAM 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  THE  CEOWN  PEINCE  OF  SIAM, 
OCTOBEE  25,  1902 

I  BEG  to  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  your  kind 
words,  and  for  the  way  you  gentlemen  have  joined 
in  honoring  this  toast.  Finding  myself  at  the  present 
moment  in  the  presence  of  such  eminent  men  as  are 
represented  here  from  all  classes,  I  feel  myself  very 
small.  And  being  a  young  man,  and  a  soldier  by  profes 
sion,  I  do  not  profess  that  I  have  any  art  in  speaking 
at  all.  The  president  has  been  so  kind  as  to  ask  me  to 
speak;  so  I  have  to  try  my  best.  Besides,  you  have 
here,  and  you  are  kind  enough  to  entertain,  two  broth 
ers,  and  you  can  hardly  expect  that  both  of  them  can 
make  speeches  without  saying  the  same  thing. 

I  am  honored  and  very  pleased  that  I  have  had  a 
chance  to  visit  this  country.  I  can  assure  you  that  I 
was  looking  forward  to  this  visit  already  a  year  ago, 
and  I  am  very  sorry  that  I  shall  have  to  leave  much 
sooner  than  my  brother,  because  being  a  soldier,  as  I 
have  said,  I  cannot  extend  my  own  leave. 

Before  sitting  down,  I  wish  to  say  only  one  thing 
more,  and  that  is  that  the  greatest  feature  I  have  found 
in  this  great  country  is  the  big-heartedness  and  kind- 

110 


PRINCE  CHOWFA  CHAKRABONGSE     111 

heartedness  of  the  people.  I  never  met  any  people  more 
kind-hearted  than  those  in  the  United  States,  and  I  say 
this  with  the  utmost  sincerity.  So  now,  before  I  sit 
down,  I  wish  to  thank  you  again,  Mr.  Lawrence,  and 
gentlemen  here,  for  the  very  kind  way  in  which  you 
have  honored  my  toast,  and  more  still  for  the  kind  way 
in  which  you  have  received  my  maiden  speech. 


FELIX  ADLEE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  THE  CROWN  PRINCE  OF  SIAM, 
OCTOBER  25,  1902 

I  HAVE  just  heard  the  definition  of  a  diplomatist  as 
a  deaf-mute.  I  have  heard  a  distinguished  gentle 
man  in  the  diplomatic  service  of  the  United  States  give 
a  somewhat  different  account  of  what  should  be  the 
qualifications  of  a  diplomatist.  He  said  that  the  su 
preme  equipment  of  a  diplomatist  is  humanity,  a  pro 
found  sense  of  the  human  worth  of  the  foreign  peoples 
to  whom  he  may  be  accredited,  in  order  that  he  may 
understand  those  people,  and,  understanding  them, 
interpret  his  country  to  them  and  them  to  his  country. 
Now  I  believe  that  these  qualifications  of  a  diplomatist 
are  those  which  every  citizen,  especially  every  citizen 
of  a  great  country  like  ours,  should  seek  to  possess. 
Allusion  has  been  made  to  the  fact  that  we  are  hence 
forth  neighbors  of  Siam,  and  in  his  admirable  address 
the  Crown  Prince  of  Siam  has  expressed  the  hope  that 
the  tie  of  commerce  would  bind  us  more  closely  to  his 
country.  But  commerce  itself,  the  successful  expan 
sion  of  commerce,  depends  in  no  little  degree  upon  the 
ability  to  understand  the  people  with  whom  the  com 
mercial  ties  are  to  be  formed,  to  understand  their 
peculiar  needs,  and  to  adapt  ourselves  to  those  needs. 
Humanitarian  sentiment  plays  a  great  role,  greater 

112 


FELIX  ABLER  113 

than  is  appreciated  even  in  the  world  of  commerce. 
Now  I,  for  one,  am  of  the  opinion  that  the  value  of  such 
functions  as  this  of  to-night  consists  not  only  in  the 
ceremonial  pageant  in  which  we  delight  to  take  part, 
but  in  the  fact  of  our  being  within  the  presence,  as  it 
were  within  the  atmosphere,  of  a  distant  people,  rep 
resented  by  their  Prince  and  future  King ;  that  people 
is  brought  nearer  to  us,  and  we  are  incited,  if  so  be 
that  hitherto  we  have  known  little  of  that  distant  coun 
try,  but  are  acquiring  information  about  it.  This 
evening  will  have  been  not  in  vain  for  us  if  it  shall 
become  the  means  of  stimulating  us  to  widen  our 
knowledge  of  that  country.  It  is  a  most  interesting 
country  and  people,  a  people  with  a  history,  a  people 
with  a  literature,  and  a  people  that  has  for  centuries 
waged  a  great  struggle  for  power  and  independence,  a 
people  that  has  been  dashed  to  the  earth  and  has  risen 
up  again  in  its  might  and  rebuilt  its  national  edifice. 
It  is  a  people  interesting  in  its  resources,  in  its  customs, 
and  in  many  peculiar  but  humane  provisions  of  its 
legislative  code.  This  people  is  looming  up  on  our 
horizon.  We  take  pride  in  receiving  the  Prince  of  Siam 
to-night,  and  we  take  pride,  I  hope,  in  receiving  the 
people  of  Siam,  that  pride  of  humanity  which  may 
have  been  distant  from  us,  which  may  have  been  an 
unknown  and  unrealized  proof  of  our  common  human 
ity  ;  and  so  we  take  pride  in  this  function  to-night,  and 
that  people  comes  nearer  to  our  understanding. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Lotos  Club,  one  has  recently  coined 
the  term  neophobia  to  express  that  contempt  of  stran 
gers,  that  aversion  to  things  foreign  and  to  people  that 
are  foreign  which  is  the  characteristic  of  primeval  man. 


114  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

primitive  and  uncivilized  man.  Nothing  is  more  char 
acteristic  of  the  lack  of  civilization  than  neophobia, 
aversion  to  what  is  alien  and  a  contempt  of  it,  and 
this  neophobia  lingers  on  into  the  midst  of  civilization. 
Such  meetings  as  this  which  the  Lotos  Club  has  ar 
ranged,  if  I  am  to  speak  from  an  ethical  point  of  view 
to-night,  if  I  am  to  emphasize  that  note,  such  meetings 
as  this  have  more  than  a  ceremonial  significance  if  they 
contribute  to  conquer  the  instinct  of  neophobia  in  our 
hearts,  if  we  go  from  here  to-night  with  a  more  cordial 
appreciation  of  what  is  foreign,  with  a  desire  to  under 
stand,  to  sympathize  with  a  people  alien  in  race,  in 
culture,  in  civilization,  and  yet  essentially  one  with  us 
and  part  of  the  great  brotherhood  of  mankind. 


HENRY  D.  ESTABROOK 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  THE  CROWN  PEINCE  OF  SIAM, 
OCTOBEE  25,  1902 

IF  the  newspapers  report  correctly,  our  royal  guest 
is  fast  modifying  his  impressions  of  New  York,  and 
I  am  quite  sure  that  the  charming  personality  of  His 
Royal  Highness  (who,  if  he  ever  becomes  a  citizen  of 
the  United  States,  I  hope  will  change  his  name,  for  his 
friends'  sake)— I  say  that  the  charming  personality  of 
the  Prince  is  fast  modifying  some  of  New  York's  pre 
conceived  notions  of  Siam.  I  doubt  if  many  New  York 
ers  ever  had  any  exact  trustworthy  information  of 
Siam.  They  had  heard  of  it,  to  be  sure,  just  as  they 
had  heard  of  Chicago  and  the  Punjab.  But  for  years 
all  of  our  knowledge  of  Siam  came  through  Mr.  Bar- 
num.  From  this  dubious  testimony  it  was  vaguely 
inferred  that,  owing  to  circumstances  over  which  they 
apparently  had  no  control,  the  people  of  Siam  traveled 
in  pairs. 

The  primary  purpose  of  this  dinner  is,  of  course, 
to  do  honor  to  His  Royal  Highness  the  Crown  Prince 
of  Siam ;  but  one  of  its  objects,  I  apprehend,  is  to  give 
him  another  snap-shot  at  an  American  banquet.  So, 
lest  by  any  peradventure  or  accident  it  should  be 
omitted  from  to-night's  program,  I  hasten  to  offer  a 
toast  without  which  no  banquet  in  this  country,  cer- 

115 


116  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

tainly  no  stag  banquet,  would  be  considered  orthodox. 
It  was  my  first  intention  to  propose  the  stereotyped 
toast  to  the  absent  sweetheart,  but  on  second  thought  I 
concluded  to  make  it  more  comprehensive— The  Ladies. 
The  word  " sweetheart"  in  the  Siamese  grammar  may 
rank  as  a  collective  noun.  If  in  this  country  it  has  a 
more  limited  signification,  it  is  due  perhaps  to  a  dif 
ference  in  our  laws  rather  than  to  a  difference  in  our 
disposition.  So  let  it  be  that  good  old  orthodox  toast, 
' ' The  Ladies." 

I  ought  to  explain  to  our  guest,  perhaps,  that  far 
more  important  than  our  constitution,  by-laws,  legisla 
tion,  or  what-not,  is  this  toast  of  ours  to  the  ladies.  We 
would  no  more  conclude  one  of  our  feasts  of  reason  and 
flows  of  soul  without  a  toast  to  the  ladies  than  we  would 
sit  down  to  our  Spartan  broth  and  such-like  exotics 
without  uttering  a  silent  grace.  For  we  hold,  in  com 
mon  with  all  good  people,  that  while  God  rules  the  uni 
verse,  his  vicegerent  on  this  earth  is  woman.  Now 
some  folks,  living,  perhaps,  in  Greenland's  icy  moun 
tains  or  Boston's  colder  strand,  might  imagine  that  a 
theme  so  constantly  recurring,  a  theme  with  so  many 
da  capos,  as  it  were,  would  become  commonplace  and 
hackneyed ;  but  that  simply  shows  that  some  folks  have 
never  studied  the  subject  and  its  kaleidoscopic  possi 
bilities.  A  man  in  love  with  only  one  woman  can  make 
life  a  burden  to  his  friends  by  forever  toasting  his 
charmer's  charms,  whereas  there  are  members  of  this 
club,  maybe,  in  love  with  twenty  women,  whose  hearts 
are  veritable  kodaks  loaded  to  the  muzzle,  requiring 
only  the  flash-light  of  a  pair  of  eyes  to  produce  an  im 
pression  and  make  them  garrulous  as  magpies.  The 


HENRY  D.  ESTABROOK  117 

theme  is  perennial ;  age  cannot  wither  nor  custom  stale 
its  infinite  variety. 

I  remember  years  agone,  when  I  used  to  live  in 
Omaha,  how  Miss  Phoebe  Cousins  and  her  emancipated 
cohorts  swooped  down  on  Nebraska  to  wrest  from 
tyrant  man  the  elective  franchise.  I  was  callow  then, 
and  challenged  the  gentle  maiden  to  a  joint  debate,  not, 
I  assured  her,  for  the  mere  purpose  of  measuring 
swords,  for,  unlike  Darius  Green,  I  was  willing  to  con 
cede 

The  bluebird  and  Phoebe 
Are  smarter  'n  we  be, 

but  because  a  hand-to-hand  debate  conducted  according 
to  Socratic  methods  might  lead  all  parties  concerned  to 
a  more  amicable  understanding.  She  wrote  declining  the 
distinguished  honor,  and  closed  her  letter  by  asking  me 
if  I  believed  in  taxation  without  representation.  Surely 
not.  But  is  it  true  that  the  women  of  America  have  not 
been  represented  in  the  legislation  of  this  country?  I 
did  not  think  so  then,  nor  do  I  think  so  now;  for  it 
seems  to  me  that  the  mother  who  pushes  back  the  hair 
from  the  forehead  of  her  little  boy,  when  standing  at 
her  knee  he  learns  from  mother  lips  his  first  lessons  in 
chivalry  and  honor;  the  sister  who  stays  with  fond 
persuasive  hand  the  wayward  course  of  a  wayward 
brother;  the  sweetheart  who  gazes  into  her  lover's  eyes, 
her  own  eyes  glistening  and  humid  in  their  tenderness 
and  trust;  the  wife  who  knows  and  shares  her  hus 
band's  cares  and  makes  his  home  a  haven  of  escape 
from  all  of  them— these,  and  such  as  these,  send  forth 
not  simply  a  representative  but  a  champion,  who  rather 


118  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

than  see  their  rights  invaded  or  a  single  prerogative 
impugned  would  lose  his  right  arm  or  perish  on  the 
battle-field.  It  is  not  that  we  would  deny  to  woman  the 
right  to  vote,  the  right  to  govern;  but  we  would  spare 
her  the  dangers  and  temptations  and  burdens  which  the 
right  involves. 

And  yet,  God  help  us,  woman  I  know  will  some  day 
vote,  and  you  and  I  no  doubt  will  sanction  it.  Indeed, 
I  have  long  since  made  up  my  mind  that  when  a  ma 
jority  of  the  women  themselves  demand  the  ballot,  they 
shall  have  it  for  aught  of  me ;  not  because  my  apprehen 
sions  would  thereby  be  allayed,  but  because  I  would 
trust  to  their  intuition  of  what  is  right  rather  than  to 
my  own  fears  of  what  is  wrong. 

Ah  me! 

Adam  lay  down  and  slept,  when  from  his  side 
A  woman  in  her  matchless  beauty  rose ; 

Trembling  and  in  love,  he  called  that  woman  bride, 
And  his  first  sleep  became  his  last  repose. 

Gentlemen,  drink— to  the  sweetest  cause  of  man's  in 
somnia  ! 


JOSEPH  I.  C.  CLAEKE 

AT  THE  SUPPEE  TO  EDWAED  H.  SOTHEEN, 
FEBEUAEY  21,  1903 

WE  have  every  reason  to  be  proud  of  our  great 
city  which  adds  a  thousand  inhabitants  to  its 
population  every  week  in  the  year,  and  where  every 
three  days  a  new  musical  comedy  opens  up  on  Broad 
way.  Of  course,  if  this  could  go  on  indefinitely,  the 
drama  in  New  York  would  in  a  little  while  not  be  above 
the  level  of  a  minstrel  show.  It  was  not,  however,  al 
ways  so,  and,  Heaven  helping,  it  will  not  always  be  so ; 
but  now,  when  frivolity  reigns,  we  cannot  help  admir 
ing  the  courage  and  grit  of  the  man  who  plans  and 
realizes  a  splendid,  a  worthy  production  of  ' '  Hamlet, ' ' 
and  this,  too,  when  twelve  musical  comedies  are  playing 
on  Broadway  and  monopolizing  the  theatres.  It  is  to 
Mr.  Sothern  we  owe  this  tribute  of  admiration. 

In  considering  such  a  man,  it  is  well  to  go  back  to  his 
origin.  He  comes  honestly  by  his  artistic  enthusiasm. 
Mr.  Sothern  was  born  into  the  dramatic  profession.  It 
may  be  said  that  he  came  into  the  world  with  the 
theatrical  silver  spoon  in  his  mouth.  He  inherited 
grace,  voice,  mimetic  power,  and— brains  from  his  dis 
tinguished  father.  But  in  the  theatrical  world,  perhaps 
more  than  in  any  other  realm  of  art,  a  stern  rule  pro 
vides  that  every  man  must  be  his  own  man.  He  may 

119 


120  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

not  be  his  father's  son  simply,  and  thus  succeed  in  the 
dramatic  profession.  That  he  is  his  father's  son  may 
help  him  because  of  the  genius  he  has  inherited,  but  it 
is  to  his  own  efforts  in  applying  it  that  the  success  he 
attains  is  due.  It  is  the  great  basic  condition  of  the 
actor  that  he  is  obliged  to  win  in  his  own  person  all  the 
success  he  may  have— each  man  for  himself.  You  have 
read  the  name  of  David  Garrick  and  learned  perchance 
where  and  how  he  made  the  Third  Richard  wonderful. 
You  know  perhaps  how  splendid  were  the  lightning 
flashes  by  which  Edmund  Kean  read  Shakespeare.  You 
have  had  experience  of  the  eery  brilliance  of  Henry 
Irving— each  a  differing  star  in  the  firmament  of  art. 
And  so  Mr.  Sothern  is  laboriously  earning  his  own 
place  on  the  higher  levels  of  the  drama. 

To  those  who  have  followed  the  career  of  Mr.  Sothern, 
nothing  has  been  more  remarkable  than  his  steady 
growth  as  an  actor  and  artist.  We  were  familiar  with 
the  light  comedian  Mr.  Sothern ;  we  were  familiar  with 
the  romantic  actor  Mr.  Sothern;  but  it  is  only  within 
the  last  few  years  that  we  have  been  convinced  that  we 
knew  the  tragedian  Mr.  Sothern. 

What  is  it  that  makes  the  tragedian?  In  essentials, 
it  is  the  same  in  all  ages :  the  power  to  interpret  on  the 
stage  the  nobler,  deeper  emotions  of  human  life,  as  por 
trayed  in  the  highest  reaches  of  the  drama.  Outwardly, 
and  off  the  stage,  the  tragedian  changes  with  the  times. 
In  the  time  of  the  respected  father  of  Mr.  Sothern,  a 
piece  was  played  in  which  an  unsuccessful  but  am 
bitious  actor  was  burlesqued;  it  was  called  "The 
Crushed  Tragedian."  The  title-role  was  sustained  by 
Mr.  Sothern 's  father,  and  we  saw  a  strange  weird  per- 


JOSEPH  I.  C.  CLARKE  121 

son,  with  long  black  hair,  shabby  black  clothes,  and  a 
constant  theatrical  pose ;  and  that  made  him  pass  for  a 
tragedian.  Nowadays,  the  man  who  plays  tragedy  is  a 
man  in  a  dress-suit,  who  comes  to  a  banquet.  Accord 
ing  to  the  pictures  of  him  in  the  old  days,  he  was  long 
haired  ;  now  his  locks  are  trimmed  pretty  close.  In  our 
day  the  actor  no  longer  has  a  supper  of  red  herring,  but 
dines  elegantly  at  the  most  modern  hotel,  or  has  his  own 
stately  home  instead  of  living  in  the  back  room  of  a 
lodging-house;  and  so  the  player  to-day  is  a  modern 
man  who  depicts  on  the  stage  the  characters,  the  expres 
sions,  and  thoughts  of  the  dramatic  author,  as  he  him 
self  interprets  them.  And  what  is  termed  naturalness 
replaces  much  that  was  traditionally  stilted  and  unreal. 
The  modern  actor  must  be  a  modern  man  who  may  be 
majestic  without  being  inflated.  At  his  best,  at  his 
highest,  he  plays  tragedy,  and  if  his  merit  sustains  him, 
he  reaches  the  highest  round  of  the  ladder.  It  is  to  that 
point  that  Mr.  Sothern  has  climbed.  The  actor  is  right 
in  thinking  that  "Hamlet"  stands  at  the  summit  of 
theatric  art,  but  we  know  also  that  there  are  Hamlets 
and  Hamlets.  We  are  certain  of  one  thing,  that  the 
Hamlet  of  Mr.  Sothern  of  1903  is  ten  years  in  advance 
of  the  Hamlet  of  Mr.  Sothern  of  1899.  It  is  plain  to 
me,  that  is,  from  my  own  personal  point  of  view,  that 
Mr.  Sothern 's  growth  in  his  art  and  profession  has  been 
enormous  within  the  last  few  years.  I  presume  it 
dates  from  the  time  when  he  took  his  courage  in  his 
hand  and  said:  "I  will  play  Hamlet."  You  cannot 
well  cross  the  ocean  until  you  have  embarked  upon  it ; 
you  cannot  sail  your  ship  by  standing  on  the  shore; 
and  therefore,  when  Mr.  Sothern  embarked  upon  the 


122  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

great  ocean  of  the  character  of  Hamlet,  he  gradually 
and  surely  discerned  the  immensity  of  the  character 
and  the  greatness  of  the  play  in  a  manner  that  never 
reached  him  before ;  and  so  he  actually  achieved  results 
that  I  am  certain  he  never  dreamed  of  when  he  started. 
And  it  is  all  so  splendidly  worth  while. 


ELIHU  BOOT 

(SECRETARY  OF  WAR) 

AT  THE  DINNEK  IN  HIS  HONOK,  MAY  9,  1903 

I  AM  deeply  sensitive,  I  could  not  be  otherwise  than 
deeply  affected,  in  receiving  this  accolade  of  honor 
conferred  by  being  the  guest  of  the  Lotos  Club.  The 
Chinese  proverb  says :  "What  is  the  use  of  being  a  man 
darin  of  two  tails  if  it  is  not  known  in  one's  native 
village?"  I  thank  you  for  the  kind  expressions  which 
the  personal  friendship  of  President  Lawrence  has  col 
ored  so  highly  and  so  agreeably  in  your  greeting  to  me. 
I  regret  my  own  incapacity  fittingly  to  respond  to  the 
honor  which  you  confer  upon  me.  I  feel  myself  to  be  in 
the  position  of  the  man  who  was  asked,  "Is  your  wife 
entertaining  this  winter?"  and  who  answered,  "Not 
very. ' ' 

I  am  in  the  safest  possible  position,  but  the  worst  pos 
sible  position,  for  originality  to-night,  because  I  am  here, 
and  speaking.  The  only  way  in  which  any  one  to-day 
can  secure  credit  for  originality  is  by  being  somewhere 
else  and  letting  the  gentlemen  of  the  press,  out  of  their 
own  fertile  imaginations,  originate  his  remarks. 

I  have  said  that  the  only  way  a  man  can  be  really 
original  is  to  be  silent,  or  to  allow  the  gentlemen  of  the 
press  to  originate  his  remarks.  We  have  had  some  signal 

123 


124  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

illustrations  of  that  in  a  statement  purporting  to  come 
from  the  President  of  the  United  States,  who  had  just 
been  most  royally  entertained  in  St.  Louis.  A  comfort 
ing  and  original  genius  of  the  press  says,  "The  Presi 
dent,  considering  sternly  for  a  moment,  said:  'You  may 
print  from  me  the  fact  that  I  had  nothing  to  eat  in 
St.  Louis/  "  I  ask  you  what  genius  could  ever  have 
originated  that  statement  outside  of  the  press.  How 
could  any  man  just  coming  from  his  entertainer's 
house  ever  have  conceived  such  a  supreme  effort  of 
originality  as  the  statement  that  he  had  had  nothing  to 
eat.  A  few  days  ago  another  genius  put  into  the  mouth 
of  General  Sir  Baden-Powell,  the  distinguished  English 
cavalry  officer  who  had  been  here  looking  at  the  move 
ments  of  our  cavalry,  the  statement  that  they  did  n't 
amount  to  much  anyway,  that  they  were  overfed.  When 
a  man  trusts  to  himself  and  really  adventures  upon  ob 
servations  which  he  really  makes,  he  is  certain  to  be 
bald  and  uninteresting. 

Your  president  has  expressed  the  hope  that  I  enjoy 
the  relaxation  and  the  hilarity  of  this  occasion.  I  as 
sure  you  that  in  about  ten  or  fifteen  minutes  I  shall 
begin  to  enjoy  it.  I  have  been  so  far  removed  from  my 
old  friends  in  New  York  for  the  past  four  years,  that  it 
seems  to  me  as  if  I  were  coming  back  from  a  great  dis 
tance,  after  a  long  period  of  absence.  It  has  not  been 
an  ordinary  exile.  It  has  so  happened  that  the  duties 
to  which  your  president  has  referred  in  too  complimen 
tary  terms  have  been  so  engrossing  in  their  character, 
have  involved  dealing  with  questions  so  entirely  differ 
ent  from  those  which  occupied  the  community  in  which 
I  had  lived  for  so  many  years,  that  not  merely  has  my 


ELIHU  ROOT  125 

body  been  absent,  but  my  mind  and  heart  and  soul  have 
been  engaged  in  the  isles  of  the  sea.  The  ordinary  exile 
who  travels  away  from  home  ever  finds  his  affection  and 
his  thoughts  harking  back  to  those  he  has  left.  For 
four  years  past  not  only  my  body  but  my  mind  have 
been  removed  to  distant  fields  and  in  different  occupa 
tions,  so  that  in  coming  back  to  New  York  it  seems  to 
me  as  if  I  had  been  away  for  an  age  in  another  world, 
and  it  seems  strange  to  me  to  find  you  all  still  so  young. 
To  find  that  you  still  have  the  same  bright  and  cheerful 
faces,  no  more  wrinkles,  no  more  gray  hairs,  no  fewer 
hairs,  no  less  enthusiasm,  and  youth,  and  capacity  for 
enjoyment,  than  when  a  hundred  years  ago  I  met  you. 
It  has  produced  a  curious  effect  upon  me,  this  coming 
back ;  the  break,  the  complete  break,  has  led  to  my  mem 
ory  going  back  and  joining  itself,  not  to  the  city  and 
the  men  as  they  were  four  years  ago,  but  going  back  to 
the  early  scenes  of  my  life  here.  As  I  come  back  to 
our  streets,  I  think  of  the  scenes  and  the  life  of  nearly 
forty  years  ago,  when  the  first  deep  impressions  of  the 
lad  coming  fresh  from  the  country  were  made.  Your 
invitation  called  up  most  vividly  to  my  mind  a  night 
passed  in  the  old  Lotos  Club  in  Irving  Place,  when 
John  Brougham  held  the  center  of  the  stage,  and  day 
light  came  under  the  spell  of  that  delightful  master  of 
humor  and  good  fellowship. 

I  remember  the  days  when  the  stages  in  winter  ran 
on  runners  on  Broadway,  and  when  the  Fifth  Avenue 
stages  coming  from  Fulton  Street  had  their  northerly 
terminus  at  the  Croton  Cottage,  a  little  road-house  at 
Forty-first  Street,  where  Frederick  Vanderbilt's  house 
stands  now;  when  the  Madison  Avenue  stages  ran  to 


126  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  Ultima  Thule  of  Forty-second  Street;  when  Pfaff's 
flourished  on  Broadway;  when  Wallack's  Theater  was 
the  most  northerly  place  of  amusement  in  the  city; 
when  New  York  was  a  little  provincial  town  of  but 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  inhabitants ;  and  it 
requires  an  effort  for  me  to  bring  myself  down  from 
those  distant  days,  from  the  days  when  the  first  thing 
I  asked  was  how  to  get  to  Beecher's  church,  and  was 
told  to  cross  Fulton  Ferry  and  follow  the  crowd,  and, 
following  it,  found  that  prince,  that  great  exponent  of 
blood  and  brain  in  religion. 

What  a  wonderful  city  it  is,  whose  appearance  and 
whose  present  activity  join  on  to  those  early  recollec 
tions  !  What  a  good  old  town  it  is !  Men  may  abuse  it ; 
many  hard  things  are  said  about  it ;  it  has  many  faults ; 
but,  after  all,  it  closes  within  its  limits  the  best  of  all 
there  is,  here  or  anywhere  on  earth,  to  those  of  us  who 
believe  that  the  hope  of  the  world  lies  in  the  great  pro 
cess  of  liberty  which  is  lifting  up  to  participation,  in 
telligent  and  effective  participation  in  government,  the 
entire  body  of  the  people,  leaving  no  class  below;  and 
those  who  do  not  believe  that  need  hard  experience  for 
their  education.  Into  this  gateway  of  the  western 
world  have  come  since  the  census  of  1850,  between  the 
census  of  1850  and  that  of  1900,  more  than  seventeen 
millions  of  people  from  across  the  water.  Here  the 
men  of  the  Old  World  are  received  and  taught  the  first 
lessons  of  citizenship,  taught  to  stand  erect  in  the  in 
dependence  of  manhood,  with  no  superior.  The  first 
results  of  the  lesson  are  not  lovely  or  agreeable,  the  first 
results  of  the  lesson  are  crude  and  harsh  and  disagree 
able,  but  it  is  a  necessary  lesson  for  the  men  who  are 


ELIHU  ROOT  127 

to  be  self-governing  and  country-governing.  Here  the 
men  of  the  Old  World  are  taught  first  that  liberty 
means  not  license,  but  ordered  liberty  and  subordina 
tion  to  law.  The  lesson  is  not  easily  learned.  The  idea 
of  freedom  in  its  first  dawning  in  the  human  mind 
means  freedom  from  all  limitations,  and  the  men  who 
grasp  it  first  beat  against  the  bars  of  order  and  law. 
But  the  burden  is  upon  this  city,  at  once,  to  teach  the 
undisciplined  masses  of  mankind  who  seek  the  freedom 
of  the  West  the  double  lesson  of  independence  and  lib 
erty,  but  of  liberty  restrained  and  ordered  by  law  and 
justice.  Let  the  denizens  of  the  cities  and  quiet  fields, 
who  have  the  ordering  of  their  own  lives  with  the  les 
sons  of  free  forefathers  to  guide  them,  find  fault  with 
the  city  of  New  York ;  but  let  them  remember  that  the 
city  of  New  York  is  doing  the  rough  work  of  civiliza 
tion,  making  over  the  raw  material  of  citizenship,  and 
standing  in  the  post  of  difficulty,  of  hardship,  and  of 
disagreeable  duty  in  the  preparation  of  mankind  for 
that  citizenship  upon  which  alone  can  permanently  rest 
the  advance  of  mankind  along  the  pathway  of  civili 
zation. 

Dear  old  New  York,  absence  has  made  me  love  her 
but  the  more,  criticism  makes  me  appreciate  her  merits 
but  the  more,  and  detraction  makes  me  but  the  prouder 
of  being  her  citizen.  And  when  I  come  in  for  a  day  or 
two,  when  I  come  here  and  see  about  me  the  faces  of 
the  old  friends  with  whom  I  have  had  so  many  good 
times,  with  whom  and  against  whom  I  have  fought  so 
often,  from  whom  I  have  received  so  many  kindnesses, 
I  want  to  come  home.  I  feel  like  the  young  lady  from 
Chicago  who  went  to  the  new  hotel,  and  wrote  back  to 


128  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

her  friend  that  the  new  bath-room  was  so  fascinating 
that  she  should  hardly  wait  until  Saturday  night. 

Coming  from  outside  the  city  and  seeing  its  wonder 
ful  advance,  and  how  the  municipal  surgery  is  opera 
ting  for  appendicitis,  taking  out  the  bowels  of  the  city, 
the  kidneys  and  the  liver,  for  underground  transit,  for 
new  Pennsylvania  tunnels  and  stations;  how  even  the 
New  York  Central  has  become  conscious  of  the  posses 
sion  of  a  liver  which  needs  excavation;  how  upon  the 
surface  our  city  is  growing  great  and  beautiful— I  feel 
bound  to  say  that  the  country,  the  great  country  with 
whose  prosperity  our  city  must  rise  or  fall,  which  finds 
its  flower  and  fruit  here,  keeps  pace  with  the  metropolis. 
I  doubt  if  there  has  ever  been  a  lustrum  in  which  any 
people  have  made  such  progress  as  the  people  of  the 
United  States  have  made  in  the  past  five  years.  When 
we  were  boys  at  Peekskill  and  elsewhere,  there  was  no 
higher  test  of  capacity  than  a  knowledge  of  geography ; 
think  how  the  people  of  the  United  States  have  been 
learning  geography  in  the  last  five  years ;  how  the  hori 
zon  of  the  American  boy  has  been  pushed  back;  five 
years  ago,  who  knew  where  the  Philippines  were ;  who 
knew  what  was  the  road  from  the  sea  to  Peking;  who 
knew  much  about  the  West  Indies?  Five  years  ago, 
how  much  did  we  know  about  the  politics  of  the  world 
that  centered  about  the  eastern  question?  We  have 
passed  through  an  era  of  isolation  since  the  days  when 
James  Monroe  and  John  Quincy  Adams  were  trained 
diplomats  concerned  in  the  affairs  of  civilization.  We 
have  passed  into  another  era,  in  which  the  people  of  the 
United  States  have  taught  a  lesson  to  every  power  in 
Christendom.  The  knowledge,  the  topics  of  discussion, 


ELIHU  ROOT  129 

the  educational  influence  to  be  found  among  our 
people,  have  suddenly,  like  the  crystals  shooting  out 
upon  the  surface  of  the  water  at  the  point  of  freezing, 
instantly  spread  out  from  our  own  domestic  home  af 
fairs  into  a  wide  and  general  observation  and  under 
standing  of  the  affairs  of  all  mankind.  The  knowledge 
and  the  interest  of  the  American  people  have  broad 
ened  and  taken  in  the  whole  world. 

The  possession  and  the  use  of  power  are  strengthen 
ing  the  fiber  and  increasing  the  capacity  of  our  people. 
The  possession  of  money  has  not  yet,  and  I  have  faith  to 
believe  that  in  the  future  it  will  not  have,  emasculated 
the  American  people  or  brought  degeneracy  in  its  wake, 
for  the  possession  of  money  which  has  resulted  from  our 
wonderful  prosperity  is  the  possession  of  money  by  all 
the  people,  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  land.  Never 
in  this  world  has  so  much  money  been  used  for  the  hap 
piness  and  comfort  of  so  many  people  as  is  being  used 
in  the  United  States  to-day.  Never  in  the  world  have 
there  been  so  many  people  so  free  from  the  harsh  re 
straints  of  poverty,  so  many  people  able  to  furnish 
luxuries  and  comforts  to  their  families,  so  many  people 
able  to  educate  their  children,  so  many  people  able  to 
perform  the  duties  of  good  citizenship,  and  secure  in 
the  comfort  and  security  of  prosperous  lives,  as  to-day. 
Where  money  is  most  greatly  concentrated,  we  see  but 
the  efflorescence  of  wealth,  in  the  four-in-hand  parade, 
the  red  devils  that  shoot  about  the  country,  in  the 
steam-yachts  which  carry  our  millionaires.  But  under 
lying  it  all  is  the  greatest  expenditure  of  money  for  all 
good  and  great  causes  that  the  world  has  ever  seen. 
Underlying  it  all  is  that  benevolence,  that  interest  in 


130  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

education,  that  love  for  humanity,  that  willingness  to 
labor  and  to  spend,  and  to  spend  without  limit,  for  the 
elevation  of  mankind,  and  the  alleviation  of  suffering, 
in  which  the  city  of  New  York  easily  leads  the  world. 

I  feel  that  in  coming  back  to  my  home  I  shall  come 
back  to  a  city  which  has  kept  up  in  the  march  of  prog 
ress  in  the  forefront  of  a  nation  ever  progressing ;  and 
I  feel  like  saying  to-night  in  this  festal  company :  Eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry,  for  to-morrow,  and  to-morrow, 
and  still  to-morrow,  and  for  unending  years,  the  great 
city  which  is  our  home  and  the  great  country  that  we 
love  will  not  die,  but  live  and  do  their  work  for  the 
elevation  of  mankind  and  the  progress  of  civilization, 
beyond  the  dreams  of  prophets  and  the  hopes  of  phi 
lanthropists. 


SIMEON  FOED 

AT  THE  DINNEK  TO  ELIHU  BOOT,  MAY  9,  1903 

THE  chairman  made  a  mistake  in  his  pronunciation 
of  golf.  What  he  ought  to  have  said  was  "guff." 
The  distinguished  guest  has  stated  that  after  an  ab 
sence  of  four  years  he  returns  to  New  York  and  finds 
among  his  friends  no  new  gray  hairs  and  no  new 
wrinkles.  I  challenge  the  latter  statement.  Now  you 
all  recollect  that  at  one  period  I  delivered  quite  a  num 
ber  of  eulogies  and  panegyrics  in  this  club  upon  dis 
tinguished  guests.  As  a  eulogizer  and  panegyricker 
and  all-round  taffy  promulgator,  I  was  in  a  class  by 
myself.  But  my  conscience  got  all  calloused  and  my 
flowers  of  rhetoric  got  a  little  frost-bitten,  and  my  stock 
of  honeyed  flattery  got  a  little  shop-worn  and  fly-blown, 
and  the  president  laid  me  on  the  shelf  for  a  while  to 
recuperate.  But  now  I  am  entirely  recuperated  and 
ready  to  declare,  with  a  fine  assumption  of  truthfulness, 
that  the  guest  of  the  evening  is  the  real  thing,  and  the 
greatest  ever,  whether  I  believe  it  or  not.  I  am  all 
ready  now,  Mr.  President,  to  throw  bouquets  with  either 
an  in-curve  or  an  out-shoot,  at  any  distinguished  guest, 
without  regard  to  race,  color,  or  previous  condition  of 
sobriety. 

It  must  be  an  awful  thing  to  lead  such  a  life  as  to 

131 


132  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

incur  one  of  these  complimentary  banquets.  That  is 
the  one  thing  that  always  prevented  me  from  amount 
ing  to  anything.  Sometimes  I  have  thought  that  I 
would  get  to  work  and  become  a  great  and  distin 
guished  citizen,  and  serve  my  country  at  my  country's 
call  at  an  inadequate  salary,  or  earn  undying  fame  in 
any  other  underhand  way.  But  then  the  horrible 
thought  would  flash  across  me,  that  the  Lotos  Club 
would  track  me  to  my  lair  and  drag  me  to  one  of  these 
complimentary  banquets.  And  when  I  think  of  having 
to  sit  up  there  in  the  midst  of  the  twelve  apostles,  try 
ing  to  look  the  part,  and  have  President  Lawrence  fix 
me  with  his  glittering  eye  and  smear  me  over,  as  a  boa- 
constrictor  does  his  prey  before  he  swallows  it,  it  makes 
me  break  out  into  a  cold  sweat. 

Now  Chester  Lord  told  me  that  he  wanted  me  to 
make  a  speech — for  I  do  not  propose  to  perjure  myself. 
He  said  the  proper  thing  for  me  to  do  was  to  talk  about 
war.  But  I  don't  know  anything  about  war,  any  more 
than  the  Secretary  does.  I  was  born  too  soon  for  the 
Spanish  War,  thank  God.  Like  many  of  our  generals, 
I  can  speak  about  war  only  from  hearsay. 

The  nearest  I  ever  got  to  war  was  when  I  fought, 
bled,  and  died  for  seven  long  years  in  the  National 
Guard,  thereby  relieving  myself  from  the  possibility  of 
serving  a  week  every  year  on  the  jury,  and  I  calculate 
that  if  I  live  to  the  ripe  age  of  350,  I  shall  have  gained 
by  the  operation.  But  when  I  joined  I  was  in  the  first 
flush  of  early  youth,  about  the  only  flush  I  ever  drew  to 
and  filled,  and  I  did  not  look  at  things  in  the  cold, 
cynical  way  that  I  do  now.  In  the  first  place  I  joined 
under  a  misapprehension;  I  was  given  to  understand 


SIMEON  FORD  133 

that  I  should  right  away  acquire  a  military  carriage. 
I  had  always  had  a  sort  of  hankering  after  a  carriage, 
and  when  I  got  into  the  awkward  squad  and  began  to 
acquire  my  carriage,  my  superfluous  flesh  and  my  en 
thusiasm  melted  right  away.  Touching  my  toes  with 
the  tips  of  my  fingers  without  bending  my  knees  was 
not  only  repulsive  to  my  proud  and  haughty  spirit  and 
severe  upon  my  suspenders,  but  proved  to  be  a  physical 
impossibility,  owing. to  my  peculiar,  lofty,  fire-proof 
construction.  It  did  not  comport,  either,  with  my  pre 
viously  conceived  notions  of  a  military  career.  I  had 
an  idea  that  I  should  start  right  in  behind  a  band  of 
music,  prancing  along,  and  that  when  arrayed  in  uni 
form  I  should  be  a  dream  of  military  pomp  and  splen 
dor,  and  that  beautiful  young  ladies  would  strew 
flowers  in  my  pathway.  This  idea  proved  to  be  er 
roneous;  when  arrayed  in  my  uniform  I  was  a  sight, 
and  beautiful  young  ladies  fled  swiftly  at  my  approach. 
But  it  was  as  a  riot-queller  that  I  gained  my  greatest 
fame.  I  think,  perhaps,  that  my  warlike  and  ferocious 
appearance  had  something  to  do  with  my  success  in  this 
line.  I  was  not  as  fleshy  then  as  I  am  now,  and  when 
arrayed  in  my  shad-bellied  coat  and  my  inverted  flower 
pot  hat  with  a  blue  sausage  on  the  top  of  it,  I  was  a 
sight  calculated  to  freeze  the  blood.  I  remember,  when 
I  was  up  at  Hornellsville  quelling  a  riot,  that  rude 
burly  rioters  used  to  gaze  on  me  when  I  was  on  guard, 
and  as  they  gazed  at  me  they  came  to  realize  that  grim- 
visaged  war  with  all  its  horrors  was  in  their  midst. 
"Were  they  to  attempt  to  monkey  with  me,  I  was  liable 
at  any  moment  to  let  loose  the  dogs  of  war.  But  I 
never  did;  and  I  always  was  relieved  when  they  went 


134  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

away  and  left  me  unmolested,  because  I  was  always 
fastidious  about  imbruing  my  hands  in  gore.  I  always 
considered  it  an  untidy  habit. 

Now  I  was  not  one  of  those  who  criticized  the  ad 
ministration  during  the  late  war.  A  great  many  people 
took  so  much  time  finding  fault  with  the  administration 
that  they  forgot  all  the  glory.  We  run  up  against  just 
such  people  as  that  in  the  hotel  business.  As  long  as 
everything  goes  along  nicely  they,  maintain  a  discreet 
silence,  but  let  them  run  up  against  an  egg  which  has 
passed  its  prime,  or  a  chicken  which  has  arrived  at  the 
age  of  consent,  and  right  away  their  lamentations  fill 
the  air.  Now,  the  only  criticism  I  could  make  of  our 
distinguished  guest's  predecessor  was  that  he  did  not 
ask  any  of  the  hotel  men  to  go  to  the  front.  Of  course 
it  is  not  absolutely  necessary  to  ask  a  hotel  man  to  go 
to  the  front,  because  all  a  hotel  man  has  to  do  is  to 
touch  a  button,  and  the  front  comes  to  him.  But,  if  a 
few  of  us  hotel  men  had  been  asked  to  go  down  to  Cuba, 
do  you  suppose  that  any  of  those  boys  would  have 
lacked  for  food?  Every  private  would  have  been  sup 
plied  with  lobster  a  la  Newburg,  and  apple-dumpling 
with  plenty  of  hard  sauce.  Yes,  sir,  and  the  hotel  men 
would  have  stood  up  under  fire;  we  are  accustomed  to 
be  stood  up  all  the  time. 


JOSEPH  C.  HENDEIX 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  ELIHU  BOOT,  MAY  9,  1903 

THE  organizing  ability  of  Secretary  Root  is  some 
thing  we  all  take  great  pride  in.  I  have  recently 
had  a  little  vacation  down  in  the  Orient,  and  I  have 
seen,  through  all  the  countries  which  I  have  visited,  a 
state  of  preparedness  in  the  matter  of  their  army,  and 
their  equipment  for  war.  From  the  placid  harbor  of 
Villefranche  I  saw  the  French  soldiery  being  drilled; 
I  saw  them  traveling  miles  upon  miles,  under  severe 
stress  of  drill,  under  heavy  equipment,  to  harden  them 
and  give  them  vigor,  and  teach  them  to  lead  the  stren 
uous  life.  I  saw  that  the  Emperor  of  Germany  was 
sending  each  year  representatives  of  his  army  to  study 
and  make  to  him  written  reports ;  and  I  have  never  seen 
an  army,  nor  have  I  ever  seen  soldiers,  who  presented 
such  a  front  for  war  as  were  gathered  by  the  Sultan  of 
Turkey  at  the  feast  of  Bairam  on  what  is  known  as  the 
Salamlik,  on  which  occasion  he  went  to  a  mosque  which 
is  about  as  near  as  the  corner  of  Forty-sixth  Street,  to 
say  his  prayers,  with  an  escort  of  thirty  thousand 
troops.  These  men  were  of  the  savage  type,  Nubians, 
Syrians,  Ethiopians,  and  Albanians,  and  they  all  had 
fight  in  their  front  and  a  thirst  for  loot  and  blood  in 
their  very  expression.  All  over  Europe  one  is  im- 

135 


136  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

pressed  with  the  sense  of  preparedness  for  war ;  we  are 
three  thousand  miles  across  the  ocean ;  we  feel  our  isola 
tion,  and  we  glory  in  it,  but  perhaps  we  have  been 
neglectful  of  the  fact  that  we  are  becoming  more  inti 
mately  connected  all  the  time  with  the  affairs  of  the 
world,  and  no  one  knows  what  strange  turn  things  may 
take  when  we  might  be  called  upon  to  show  an  ability 
to  take  care  of  the  name  and  the  fame  of  the  United 
States  of  America,  And  therefore  it  is  a  pleasant  thing 
to  all  of  us  as  citizens,  peace-loving,  home-loving  burgh 
ers,  to  feel  that  a  Secretary  of  War  has  come  upon  the 
scene  who  has  the  capacity  to  take  hold  of  the  army 
establishment  and  put  it  into  modern  and  efficient  trim. 
Reference  has  been  made  to  the  very  remarkable  state 
of  prosperity  in  our  country,  and  all  of  us  feel  the 
elixir  of  it  in  our  blood;  the  fine  wine  of  it  kindles  in 
our  brain  and  warms  our  heart ;  but  may  it  not  be  the 
subject  of  analysis ;  is  it  not  possible  for  us  as  ordinary 
students  of  human  affairs  to  look  at  it  in  the  cold  light 
of  scientific  fact?  There  is  an  old  saying,  and  it  has 
come  into  the  economic  literature  of  Great  Britain,  that 
when  America  puts  on  her  old  clothes  and  her  old  shoes, 
she  lays  the  world  under  tribute.  Preceding  this  period 
of  great  prosperity,  I  think  it  will  be  admitted  by  all 
of  you  that  there  was  a  period  when  things  were  vastly 
different,  and  we  left  a  great  many  things  undone 
which  were  pressing  to  be  done ;  but  the  times  were  not 
ripe,  and  we  did  n't  feel  like  it,  and  it  is  characteristic 
of  our  country  that  we  are  always  on  the  mountain-tops 
of  prosperity  or  in  the  depths  of  despair.  At  that 
period  we  were  in  the  depths  of  despair,  and  out  of  it 
we  have  slowly  wound  like  one  of  those  Greek  proces- 


JOSEPH  C.  HENDRIX  137 

sions  winding  up  the  mountain-side  from  the  valley 
below,  and  we  have  come  up  to  the  mountain  of  pros 
perity  and  we  have  gone  on  steadily  with  the  sun  shin 
ing  in  our  faces,  the  balmy  air  about  us,  the  joy  of  the 
song  of  success  all  about  us,  and  we  feel  to-day  that  we 
are  the  conquerors  of  the  earth.  It  is  in  our  blood  al 
ways  to  exalt  ourselves,  but  let  us  take  into  considera 
tion  the  fact  that  we  have  been  forcing  into  four  or  five 
years  the  normal  business  of  ten  or  twelve  years,  that 
we  have  gone  through  a  period  of  tremendous  excite 
ment,  that  we  have  been  the  most  highly  stimulated 
country  that  ever  was  known  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 
We  have  not  only  been  stimulated  by  a  high  protective 
tariff,  one  of  the  very  highest  known  in  history,  but  we 
have  been  stimulated  by  the  manufacture  of  a  great 
amount  of  additional  money  which  has  been  placed  in 
circulation  all  over  the  country,  not  only  the  good  hard 
money  that  comes  out  of  the  soil,  not  only  the  magnifi 
cent  product  of  the  gold-mines  of  the  West,  added  to  by 
the  rich  fruition  of  the  discoveries  in  the  Klondike,  but 
by  one  of  the  most  brilliant  operations  of  modern  his 
tory,  by  which  we  have  added  about  a  hundred  millions 
to  our  money  in  circulation,  based  not  only  upon  the 
faith  of  the  Government,  but  also  on  the  assets  of  the 
national  banks.  These  are  some  of  the  influences  that 
have  come  into  our  blood,  and  into  our  national  life, 
and  warmed  us  like  a  brandy  cocktail  helped  out  by  an 
injection  of  cocaine,  and  made  us  feel  that  we  are  to-day 
the  most  magnificent  nation  on  the  face  of  the  earth. 

Let  any  one  go  into  Egypt  to-day  and  see  what  the 
English  government  is  doing  there ;  let  him  stand  on  the 
banks  of  that  wondrous  river  Nile  and  calculate  the 


138  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

immensity  of  the  product  of  that  country  when  the  full 
effect  of  the  engineering  project  which  the  English  peo 
ple  have  executed  at  the  Assuan  dam  gets  into  opera 
tion.  This  is  a  tremendous  world;  we  are  a  great 
producing  people.  We  pride  ourselves  upon  the  fact 
that  we  are  the  granary  of  the  world.  We  are,  and  so 
may  we  remain.  But  the  world  is  active ;  cheap  labor  is 
working  everywhere;  the  Nile  is  being  cultivated  in 
little  patches  hardly  big  enough  for  a  man  to  take  a 
fair  turn  around  before  breakfast  in.  Granaries  are 
being  established  on  the  mountain-sides  of  Syria,  the 
great  valleys  of  the  Lebanon,  and  the  crops  being  pro 
duced  there  are  something  which  astonishes  a  man  who 
has  never  seen  them  before. 

And  all  this  leads  me  simply  to  say  that  there  is  a 
time  in  the  affairs  of  nations,  when  in  the  height  of 
prosperity,  when  the  sky  looks  all  bright,  when  the 
sunshine  touches  every  bit  of  the  landscape  before  us, 
when  hard  common  sense  and  prudence  should  impel 
the  public  administration  to  have  a  care  for  the  mor 
row  ;  and  no  event  of  the  past  years  has  to  my  humble 
judgment  been  more  significant  than  the  fact  that  the 
organizing  talent  of  the  city  of  New  York  has  happened 
to  be  in  the  office  of  the  Secretary  of  War,  and  that  he 
has  brushed  out  the  cobwebs  and  thrown  into  the  dust- 
heap  the  obsolete  customs  and  methods,  and  put  that 
one  strong  arm  of  the  American  Government  into 
proper  place.  There  is  still  more  to  be  done,  and  I 
trust  that  before  this  administration  closes  its  career,  as 
a  man  who  believes  in  Democratic  philosophy,  and  who 
voted  twice  with  great  satisfaction  for  President  Mc- 
Kinley,  I  feel  that  as  we  go  along  from  manhood  to  old 


JOSEPH  C.  HENDRIX  139 

age,  we  of  this  generation,  those  of  us  who  have  lived 
in  this  time,  will  more  and  more  honor  that  great  name 
and  feel  that  in  the  long  line  of  Presidents  that  have 
come  down  to  us,  strong  individuals,  great  men,  fit 
for  great  occasions,  there  was  no  man  better  suited  to 
his  time  or  who  could  respond  with  more  delicacy  to  the 
American  sentiment,  who  could  act  with  more  common 
sense,  who  could  conduct  his  administration  with  more 
placidity  and  with  more  success  for  the  American  peo 
ple,  than  William  McKinley. 


SIR  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG 

(CHINESE  MINISTER) 
AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOE,  NOVEMBER  28,  1903 


extraordinarily  good  judgment  of  the  executive 
JL  committee  of  this  club  has  again  been  shown  in 
selecting  for  this  evening's  entertainment  this  auspi 
cious  day,  the  sixty-eighth  anniversary  of  the  birthday 
of  Her  Majesty  the  Empress  Dowager  of  China.  Gen 
tlemen,  I  sincerely  consider  this  as  a  great  honor.  Such 
honor  I  believe  it  is  your  custom  to  reserve  to  those 
who  have  achieved  something  in  the  realms  of  letters, 
of  art,  of  science,  of  finance,  or  politics.  I  am  at  a  loss 
to  know  what  I  have  done  to  merit  this  special  dis 
tinction.  Shakespeare  says,  "Some  have  greatness 
thrust  upon  them.  '  '  My  case,  I  suppose,  is  an  instance 
of  this.  My  attendance  at  this  dinner  is  not  entirely 
free  from  misgivings.  I  have  heard  before  of  the  native 
tribe  of  Lotos-eaters,  and  the  fate  of  Ulysses's  com- 
panions-in-arms  who  happened  to  fall  among  them  is 
well  known.  It  is  said  that  those  who  partook  of  the 
luxuries  which  the  Lotos-eaters  had  to  offer,  forgot 
their  own  native  country,  and  lost  all  desire  to  return 
to  their  homes.  The  modern  Lotos-eater  has  certainly 
succeeded  in  keeping  up  the  good  reputation  of  his 
remote  ancestors,  in  this  delightful  entertainment.  I 
wonder  if  this  evening's  enjoyment  will  have  upon  me 

140 


SIR  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG      141 

the  same  effect  as  the  companions  of  Ulysses  experi 
enced  in  their  journey  ings.  There  can  be  nothing 
more  clearly  showing  the  natural  instinct  of  the  Lotos- 
eaters  than  the  removal  of  their  homes  from  northern 
Africa  to  the  eastern  part  of  the  United  States.  The 
sands  of  the  Libyan  Desert  are  anything  but  congenial 
to  their  natures.  Only  the  surroundings  of  such  a  city 
as  New  York  are  able  to  fulfil  and  to  satisfy  the  re 
quirements  of  their  refined  taste  and  cultivated  minds. 
Having  become  a  Lotos-eater  myself,  I  am  now  ex 
pected  to  give  a  more  satisfactory  answer  to  the  ques 
tion  which  I  have  been  asked  times  without  number: 
* '  How  do  you  like  this  country  ? ' ' 

Why  should  I  not  like  this  country  ?  All  my  past  ex 
perience  of  it  has  been  of  the  most  pleasant  kind.  It 
was  in  this  country  that  I  spent  my  boyhood.  I  remem 
ber  very  well  my  school-days  spent  in  a  State  of  New 
England.  What  a  contrast  between  those  and  what  we 
have  been  accustomed  to  in  China.  School  life  in  China 
means  a  steady  grind.  There  is  no  rest  from  day  to  day, 
from  month  to  month,  always  study,  and  no  play. 
When  I  came  to  this  country,  it  did  not  take  me  many 
days  to  find  out  that  America  had  an  entirely  different 
standard  of  scholarship.  Accordingly  I  entered  with 
enthusiasm  into  the  sports  which  the  American  boy 
loves  the  most,  with  the  result  that  I  carried  back  to 
China  with  me,  after  seven  years  of  conscientious  study 
at  the  best  school  in  New  England,  a  little  Latin,  less 
Greek,  but  a  great  deal  of  base-ball  lore.  Not  many 
years  elapsed  before  I  had  another  opportunity  to  come 
to  the  United  States.  This  time  it  was  to  join  the  Im 
perial  Legation  in  Washington  as  an  attache.  While  a 


342  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

student,  I  had  had  the  proud  privilege  of  shaking  hands 
with  President  Grant,  and  at  this  time  I  had  the  honor 
of  shaking  hands  with  the  first  Democratic  President  of 
the  present  generation. 

It  is  supposed  that  the  chief  duties  of  a  diplomat  are 
to  uphold  the  honor  of  his  country  abroad.  In  this  re 
gard  I  did  my  humble  part.  I  found  it  was  very  pleas 
ant  to  attend,  day  after  day,  teas,  dinners,  and  other 
official  receptions  of  that  nature ;  but  I  must  confess  it 
was  rather  wearing  on  the  digestive  organs,  as  well  as 
on  my  clothes.  My  first  official  sojourn  in  this  country 
seemed  to  have  been  a  sort  of  preparation  for  the  sec 
ond,  my  present  one.  I  was  pleased  beyond  measure  a 
year  ago  when  I  received  the  appointment  as  His  Im 
perial  Majesty's  Envoy  to  the  United  States.  It  would 
seem  as  if  my  wishes  in  this  direction  had  been  con 
sulted.  The  reception  that  I  have  met  with  since  my 
arrival  in  this  present  capacity  has  made  me  feel  that  I 
have  come  among  old  friends.  It  will  be  my  highest 
ambition,  as  well  as  my  bounden  duty,  to  do  all  I  can  to 
create  always  a  good  feeling  and  a  better  relation  be 
tween  the  country  of  my  birth  and  the  country  of  my 
bringing  up. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  conceive  how  two  countries 
could  be  better  situated,  geographically  or  numerically, 
to  accommodate  the  welfare  of  each  other,  than  China 
and  the  United  States.  The  waters  of  the  same  ocean 
wash  the  shores  of  both ;  steamers  ply  regularly  between 
their  principal  seaports ;  direct  telegraphic  communica 
tion  across  the  intervening  depths  of  the  Pacific  is  now 
an  accomplished  fact;  the  tendency  of  every  day's  hap 
penings  seems  to  draw  the  two  countries  into  closer 


SIR  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG      143 

relation.  Moreover,  the  industrial  development  of  the 
United  States  has  reached  a  point  where  an  outlet  for 
its  products  and  manufactures  is  a  pressing  necessity. 
What  country  can  furnish  a  better  market  than  China  ? 
On  the  other  hand,  the  opening  of  China  presents  un 
told  opportunities.  What  country  is  better  situated 
than  the  United  States  to  improve  this  opportunity  ? 

I  should  like  to  say,  gentlemen,  China  and  the  United 
States  should  become  more  helpful  to  each  other ;  and  I 
should  like  to  help  in  working  out  the  manifest  destiny 
of  both,  and  securing  the  greatest  happiness  to  the  peo 
ple  of  the  two  countries. 


THOMAS  E.  SLICEE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  SIE  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG, 
NOVEMBEE  28,  1903 

I  SUPPOSE  that  ordinarily  a  Christian  minister 
would  have  to  explain  himself  to  a  Chinese  minister 
but  for  the  fact  that  the  guest  of  the  evening  has  had 
the  New  England  training  referred  to,  and  that  I  be 
long  to  a  denomination  of  Christians  that  never  sent  a 
missionary  to  China.  We  did  send  a  man  to  Japan  at 
the  request  of  the  Japanese  people  in  the  high  circles 
of  Tokio.  They  asked  to  have  a  Harvard  man  sent  over 
upon  a  mission  of  sympathetic  inquiry  as  to  the  resem 
blances  between  liberal  Christianity  and  Buddhism  and 
Shintoism,  and  a  few  other  assorted  religions;  but  he 
insisted  that  he  should  not  be  called  ' '  a  missionary  " ;  so 
in  the  meeting  which  dismissed  him  from  this  country 
upon  his  errand,  he  was  called  a  Minister  Extraordi 
nary  from  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  to  the  Empire  of 
Japan.  And  that  is  very  much  my  position  now  with 
regard  to  the  guest  of  the  evening.  I  never  have  been 
able  to  worry  myself  into  any  excitement  about  the 
paganism  of  China.  It  is  impossible  for  me.  I  am  able 
to  believe  that  whatever  the  missionary  to  China  might 
do,  he  had  nothing  to  offer  the  Chinamen  on  the  score 
of  ethics,  and  nothing  in  the  essential  and  large  sense  of 
the  classics,  or  of  literature.  I  have  no  doubt  a  great 

144 


THOMAS  R.   SLICER  145 

deal  of  good  work  has  been  done ;  but  I  am  rather  glad 
this  evening  that  I  belong  to  a  denomination  which  has 
never  sent  a  missionary  to  China. 

I  was  struck  with  the  recital  which  the  guest  of  the 
evening  made  of  his  promotion  from  one  stage  of  service 
of  the  empire  to  another;  he  was  sent  to  an  American 
school.  Did  you  ever  hear  of  one  of  our  diplomats  being 
sent  to  China,  to  Korea,  or  to  Japan,  or  anywhere  else 
where  he  might  possibly  have  to  serve  afterward  ?  Has 
it  ever  dawned  on  our  people  that  consular  service  and 
diplomatic  service  might  be  a  profession  for  which  a 
man  should  be  trained  from  the  beginning  in  the  very 
rudiments  of  learning,  by  contact  with  the  people  that 
he  shall  serve?  We  have  not  reached,  sir,  the  distinc 
tion  of  your  country  in  understanding  that  the  service 
of  government  is  also  a  high  service  for  any  human 
being,  and  requires  a  great  preparation,  an  understand 
ing  which  has  fallen  to  the  Oriental  mind  through  the 
wisdom  of  your  people.  The  usual  course  in  this  coun 
try  when  a  man  wants  anything,  is  that  he  goes  and  asks 
for  it,  without  any  particular  training;  and  the  more 
readily  he  asks,  the  greater  the  area  of  his  ignorance, 
as  a  rule. 

When  I  was  signing  my  humble  name  to  these  copies 
of  this  most  ingenious  menu,  which  reflects  such  credit 
on  Secretary  Lord  that  it  almost  seems  like  an  act 
of  divine  providence  to  come  to  the  Lotos  Club,  I  said 
to  myself,  "What  could  be  more  Celestial ?  What  could 
adorn  more  the  idea  of  the  entertainment  of  the  guest 
of  the  evening  than  to  have  these  twenty  odd  copies  of 
the  menu  given  out  to  the  world  with  the  signature  of 
the  distinguished  guest  of  the  evening,  flanked  by  the 


146  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

names  of  General  Woodford  and  Senator  McCarren, 
Lieutenant-Governor  Woodruff  and  a  Unitarian  minis 
ter,  to  keep  the  peace  between  them?  It  seems  to  me 
a  most  charming  and  auspicious  thing  to  be  in  that 
frame  with  the  rest  of  them,  when  they  come  to  be 
framed  and  hung  up  in  the  clubs  to  which  they 
shall  go. 

I  should  like  to  tell  one  of  your  guests,  Mr.  Henry 
W.  Lucy,  a  story.  Mr.  Lucy  speaks  the  American  dia 
lect  so  perfectly  that  he  will  not  mind  if  I  speak  the 
original  English  to  which  he  is  somewhat  accustomed. 
It  was  suggested  to  me,  and  perhaps  the  Minister  from 
China  will  pardon  this  digression,  for  it  has  nothing  in 
the  world  to  do  with  him,  if  I  say  to  Mr.  Lucy  that  the 
difference  between  American  humor  and  the  English 
humor,  for  which  you  had  no  answer  ready,  if  I  under 
stand  you,  is  well  illustrated  by  an  incident  that  oc 
curred  in  Chicago— things  do  occur  in  Chicago  besides 
the  packing  business.  A  distinguished  English  actress 
and  her  husband  were  dining  at  table  with  a  friend  of 
mine,  and  this  Englishman— you  will  pardon  my  revert 
ing  to  the  original  English  tongue— said  to  my  friend : 
"We  are  going  to  Leavenworth  to-day;  is  there  any 
thing  in  Leavenworth  that  we  ought  to  see  f ' '  And  my 
friend  said:  "Well,  there  is  a  military  post  there,  and 
there  is  quite  a  picturesque  figure  there  also,  General 
Pope,  who  is  commandant  there."  Said  the  English 
man:  "Yes,  I  think  I  remember  the  name  Pope  in  the 
Civil  War."  "Yes,"  replied  my  friend,  "he  is  the  one 
who  provoked  from  General  Lee  the  only  facetious  re 
mark  supposed  to  have  ever  been  used  by  him  in  the 
war."  Said  the  Englishman:  "Yes,  a  fine  man,  Lee; 


THOMAS  R.  SLICER  147 

we  know  about  Lee."  My  friend  continued:  "When 
General  Pope  took  command  of  the  Army  of  the  Poto 
mac,  General  Lee  was  shown  the  first  order  of  General 
Pope,  who  had  succeeded  General  McClellan.  He  read 
at  the  top  of  it,  'Headquarters  in  the  Saddle,'  which,  as 
you  remember,  was  a  slightly  satirical  thrust  toward  the 
somewhat  staid  movements  of  the  former  commander. 
General  Lee  said:  'Headquarters  in  the  Saddle';  this 
is  the  first  instance  in  history  of  a  man  having  his  head 
quarters  where  his  hindquarters  ought  to  be. '  " 

Well,  what  do  you  suppose  my  English  friend  said 
when  that  was  referred  to  by  the  American  as  illustrat 
ing  the  difference  between  English  and  American 
humor  ? 

MR.  LUCY  :  I  give  it  up. 

MR.  SLICER:  Well,  the  Englishman  said:  "Yes,  and  a 
very  pretty  compliment,  too,  was  n't  it?"  Now,  I  un 
derstand  that ;  I  understand  the  process,  its  psychology. 
It  is  inconceivable  in  the  mind  of  a  gentleman  of  the 
English  nation  that  any  officer  should  speak  ill  of  an 
other  officer,  and  having  heard  the  name  of  the  distin 
guished  General  Lee,  one  of  the  greatest  men  of  the 
Civil  War,  if  not  the  greatest  general  in  that  conflict ;  I 
say,  having  heard  the  name  of  this  distinguished  sol 
dier,  he  had  already  made  up  his  mind  that  whatever 
he  said  was  complimentary,  and  he  did  not  hear  the 
conclusion.  He  did  not  hear  the  facetious  remark;  he 
could  not  conceive  of  anything  facetious  that  should  not 
be  complimentary,  and  nobody  knows  how  perfectly 
true  that  is  of  the  English  people  better  than  Mr.  Lucy 
himself,  who  enlivens  the  pages  of  Punch  with  jokes 
that  are  carefully  explained  in  the  context. 


148  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Now,  after  this  digression,  Your  Excellency,  may  I 
say  a  serious  word  about  what  you  can  do  for  us  ?  Ref 
erence  has  been  made  to  China  and  America  as  mutu 
ally  interested  for  the  world's  good.  "We  are  so  far 
apart  that  we  meet  coming  around  opposite  curves ;  so 
far  apart  in  our  conception  of  civilization  and  tradi 
tions.  "We  have  n't  much  background,  but  we  are 
splendid  on  coming  forward.  Of  course,  we  seem  new 
to  you,  and  crass,  and  rude,  and,  I  presume,  were  you 
in  your  own  land,  you  would  not  be  able  to  forbear  the 
thought  that  we  are  barbarians,  after  the  manner  of  the 
Greeks  of  other  days ;  and  in  the  splendid  achievements 
of  your  literature,  and  the  consistent  habit  of  your 
thought,  we,  no  doubt,  seem  a  little  crude  and  new.  Of 
course,  there  is  one  point  in  which  we  resemble  your 
own  progress. 

Returning  to  the  reminiscences  of  the  ball  field  on 
which  you  met  some  of  our  budding  statesmen  at 
Andover,  I  want  to  say  to  you,  sir,  that  many  a  man 
among  us  has  risen  to  distinction  through  the  "high 
ball  ' '  and  the  ' '  bat. ' '  There  is  a  steady  progression  up 
ward  through  those  lines. 

But  there  is  one  thing  I  would  add:  if  you  have 
leisure,  start  a  class  of  ethics  in  Washington,  teach  the 
Confucian  ethics  and  the  laws  of  Mencius  to  that  kalei 
doscopic  assembly  we  call  our  Congress ;  you  might  do 
a  service  very  far-reaching,  more  far-reaching  than  even 
your  genius  can  conceive.  There  is  in  the  Confucian 
ethics  and  the  laws  of  Mencius,  the  splendid  self-ab 
negation  of  Buddhism,  the  splendid  reverence  that 
Shintoism  has  taught  for  the  ancestor  which  it  worships 
and  which  it  conceives  for  the  past,  and  I  wish  that  you 


THOMAS  R.  SLICER  149 

would  get  up  a  Sunday-school  class,  even  a  kinder 
garten,  of  the  two  houses  of  Congress ;  repeat  to  them  a 
few  precepts  daily,  with  the  privilege  on  their  part  of 
morning  prayer  afterward.  I  believe,  sir,  that  you 
would  do  a  service  to  the  whole  nation. 


STEWART  L.  WOODFORD 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  SIR  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG, 
NOVEMBER  28,  1903 

WHEN  it  was  my  privilege  to  represent  this  Gov 
ernment  at  Madrid,  in  the  years  1897  and  1898, 
I  found  that  the  Minister  from  China  to  the  United 
States  was  also  accredited  to  the  Court  of  Spain,  and 
my  first  meeting  with  His  Excellency's  predecessor,  Wu 
Ting  Fang,  was  as  Minister  from  China  at  Madrid.  My 
introduction  to  China  was  thus  coincident  with  my  in 
troduction  to  the  diplomatic  service. 

A  year  ago  I  was  permitted  to  spend  my  summer  in 
the  Orient,  and  since  then  I  have  thought  much  and 
often  of  the  great  fact  that  all  large  immigrations  of 
races  seem  for  the  last  six  thousand  years  to  have  been 
continuously  westward.  When  those  who  dwelt  here  in 
northern  America,  whoever  they  were,  were  lost  in  the 
savagery  of  the  American  continent  and  forest,  China 
stood  already  in  the  forefront  of  the  then  developed 
intellectual  supremacy  and  civilization  of  the  world. 
It  seems  to  have  begun  somewhere  in  Korea  or  China, 
and  to  have  moved  by  progressive  steps  westward.  That 
was  the  experience  of  Babylon,  Persia,  Egypt,  Greece, 
Borne,  France,  Germany,  The  Netherlands,  and  Great 
Britain.  Across  the  sea  and  across  the  continent,  ever 

150 


STEWART  L.  WOODFORD  151 

westward,  moved  the  armies  of  civilization.  As  we 
greet  our  guest  to-night,  the  remembrance  is  forced 
upon  me  that  the  very  discovery  of  this  continent  and 
its  ensuing  civilization  came  from  the  tendency  of  the 
Spaniards  to  go  westward  to  find  the  Orient.  They 
thus  discovered  the  West  Indian  Islands.  Our  conti 
nent  and  our  civilization  are  the  result.  And  now, 
strangely  enough,  the  thought  and  hope  of  our  people 
is  directed  toward  piercing  the  Isthmus  and  creating  a 
canal  that  shall  carry  our  civilization  and  commerce 
farther  westward  through  that  Isthmus  and  across  the 
Pacific  seas.  Remember  also  that,  by  the  recent 
decisions  of  the  International  Court  of  Arbitration  in 
England,  to  us  has  been  given  the  practical  command 
of  the  entire  eastern  coast  of  the  Pacific.  Across  that 
ocean,  those  old  Oriental  lands  and  old  nations  hold 
what  men  have  called  the  Orient,  but  which  is  really 
the  western  side  of  the  Pacific.  What  is  to  come  in  the 
years  that  are  to  be  no  man  can  know.  What  is  to  be 
the  future  of  the  great  empire  of  our  Chinese  guest 
and  friend,  no  man  can  tell.  But  in  the  movement  of 
the  civilization  of  the  world,  that  movement  is  inevi 
tably  to  go  westward  and  ever  westward.  The  circle 
that  has  not  been  completed  in  these  thousands  of  years 
around  the  entire  globe  is  beginning  again  on  the  coast 
of  Japan,  Korea,  and  China.  With  modern  means  of 
travel  and  modern  scientific  knowledge,  the  new  west 
ward  movement  will  be  larger,  broader,  and  more 
speedy  than  the  old.  The  ancient  movement  was  by 
caravans  and  by  the  march  of  armies.  Now  it  will  be 
by  railway,  by  steamship,  by  telegraph,  and  telephone. 
These  newer  and  more  complete  commercial  communi- 


152  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

cations  will  girdle  the  entire  globe,  and  should  bind  all 
people  in  a  real  and  vital  community  of  interests.  God 
grant— and  I  speak  it  reverently— that  armed  collision 
of  these  interests  on  the  far  western  side  of  the  Pacific 
shall  not  occur.  And  so  I  join  in  His  Excellency's 
earnest  prayer  that  the  movement  may  be  for  the  good  of 
China  and  the  good  of  ourselves,  and  may  the  material 
civilizations  of  the  western  people  take  on  and  accept 
the  higher  moral  development  of  the  eastern  people,  for 
in  some  respects  they  are  far  superior  to  us.  They 
reverence  age  as  we  have  never  reverenced  it;  they 
respect  personal  rights  as  even  we  here  do  not  respect 
them;  and  they  really  love  and  strive  for  peace.  I 
pray  that  in  the  future  no  collision  of  commercial  in 
terests  shall  come,  but  may  the  higher  purpose,  not 
merely  of  the  Christian  civilization  or  of  the  Confucian 
civilization,  but  the  higher  purpose  of  a  humanitarian 
civilization,  prevail  and  control  both  of  us.  May  the 
future  be  good  to  them  and  good  to  us,  and  may  all  the 
world  be  better  as  we  shall  come  nearer,  inevitably 
nearer  to  China  and  the  Orient. 


JOSEPH  WHEELER 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  SIB  CHENTUNG  LIANG  CHANG, 
NOVEMBER  28,  1903 

PRESIDENT  LAWKENCE  spoke  as  to  how  lit 
tle  we  knew  of  China  and  of  the  Chinese,  and  I 
thought  he  was  going  to  add  that  the  more  we  knew  of 
them  the  more  respect  we  felt  for  the  Chinese,  and  the 
more  we  knew  of  the  country  the  more  we  honored  it. 
In  every  phase  of  life  where  we  have  come  in  contact 
with  the  Chinese  people,  we  have  found  in  them  the 
most  noble  and  admirable  qualities.  In  every  relation 
of  life  they  show  an  integrity  of  which  their  people 
should  be  proud. 

A  little  experience  that  our  Army  had  with  the 
Chinese :  it  was  the  universal  expression  of  the  officers 
who  saw  their  conduct  in  battle  that  they  were  as  brave 
men  as  they  had  ever  seen  in  any  country.  There  has 
been  much  said  to-night  about  the  advantages  of  close 
intercourse  between  China  and  this  great  country,  but 
all  that  has  been  said  was  of  a  very  general  character. 
There  are  men  in  my  presence  who,  during  their  early 
lives,  knew  how  insignificant  this  country  was  in  the 
eyes  of  other  nations,  and  during  their  lives  our 
progress  has  been  so  great  that  to-day  we  are  not  only 
the  greatest  producers  of  staple  products,  but  we  pro 
duce  nearly  half  the  staple  products  of  the  world. 

153 


154  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

While  this  great  progress  has  been  advancing,  we  have 
found  markets  for  the  output  of  our  factories  and 
farms  in  the  more  rural,  and,  in  a  measure,  in  the  west 
ern  part  of  the  country.  Now,  these  sections  are  ceasing 
to  be  customers,  consumers,  and  are  becoming  competi 
tors,  producers,  and  every  thoughtful  mind  must  real 
ize  that  to  continue  the  great  progress  of  which  we 
boast,  we  must  find  other  markets ;  and  China,  with  her 
industry  and  vast  population,  makes  what  the  whole 
world  wants,  and  we  produce  what  China  must  have. 
It  seems  to  me  it  solves  a  problem  of  our  future  prog 
ress. 

Now,  Mr.  President,  after  these  eloquent  speeches, 
after  what  has  been  said,  and  said  so  well,  so  ably,  and 
wittily,  I  want  to  thank  you  for  the  honor  and  pleasure 
of  being  with  you  to-night,  and  I  want  to  say  that  it 
gives  me  great  pleasure  to  participate  on  this  occasion, 
where  the  youngest  nation  of  the  earth  greets  with  both 
hands  the  great  Celestial  Empire. 


SIR  HENRY  MORTIMER  DURAND 

(BRITISH  AMBASSADOR) 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  JANUARY  20,  1904 

WHEN  I  was  dining  the  other  night  in  Washing 
ton  with  the  Gridiron  Club,  who  were  diverting 
themselves  in  their  delightful  manner  by  roasting  some 
of  your  public  men,  I  told  them  of  a  piece  of  advice 
I  had  received  from  a  very  distinguished  citizen  of  the 
United  States  which  was  very  excellent,  and  which,  I 
think,  will  bear  repeating.  He  said  to  me:  "Are  you 
accustomed  to  speaking  in  public?"  I  said:  "No,  not 
at  all."  He  said:  "I  will  give  you  a  piece  of  advice. 
There  are  two  things  for  you  to  bear  in  mind :  the  first 
is,  don't  speak  too  often;  and  the  second  is,  when  you 
do  speak,  don't  speak  too  long." 

I  thank  you,  Mr.  President,  for  what  you  have  said. 
I  hope  I  may  say  that  the  thinking  Englishman  will 
face  his  enemy  with  as  much  courage  as  other  people; 
but  if  you  put  him  on  his  legs  to  face  several  score  of 
friends  after  dinner,  all  that  courage  oozes  out.  To 
use  the  words  of  the  immortal  Falstaff,  "He  has  no 
more  valor  than  a  wild  duck. ' ' 

"When  the  good  ship  Etruria,  in  which  I  came  out 
from  England,  was  lying  in  Queenstown,  a  steward 
brought  me  a  letter  and  a  book.  The  letter  was  your 
very  courteous  invitation,  and  the  book  was  a  volume 

155 


156  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

of  speeches  at  the  Lotos  Club.  Now,  gentlemen,  I  am 
quite  a  conscientious  man,  and  I  began  by  reading  the 
invitation,  and  then  the  introduction,  and  I  had  not 
read  far  when  I  came  to  the  following:  " Nothing  ex 
traneous  will  avail  the  man  who  rises  to  speak  at  the 
Lotos  Club  table.  He  must  then  show  himself  to  be 
capable  of  original  thought  and  feeling,  or  he  is  a  lost 
man. ' ' 

Gentlemen,  when  I  read  that  sentence,  I  put  down 
the  book  with  a  groan,  and  as  the  Persians  say,  my 
heart  turned  to  water.  I  saw  myself  standing  before 
this  dread  tribunal,  wretched,  no  originality  in  me, 
11  nothing  original  in  me  excepting  original  sin.''  I 
could  see  myself,  a  poor  wretch  standing  before  this 
dread  conclave,  faltering  a  few  words,  and  looking 
around  in  dull  despair,  reading  my  doom  in  the  faces 
of  my  audience.  So  terrifying  was  the  picture  that  my 
first  inclination  was  to  call  in  the  aid  of  that  horrible 
invention,  the  Marconi  telegraph,  and  send  a  message 
resigning  the  embassy  at  Washington,  and  then  go  over 
the  ship's  side  and  strike  out  for  shore.  But  I  re 
frained,  and  here  I  am. 

I  have  said,  I  am  afraid,  rather  strong  words  about 
the  Marconi  system.  I  have  the  greatest  admiration 
for  the  genius  of  the  great  Marconi,  but  he  really  has 
destroyed  the  rest  and  refuge  of  a  man  who  wants 
peace.  We  used  to  think  that  in  mid-ocean  we  were 
absolutely  free  from  the  telegraph  boy,  and  now  he  has 
burdened  us  even  in  that  last  haven  of  refuge.  In 
Persia,  which  is  covered  with  telegraph  lines,  we  used 
to  get  a  certain  amount  of  peace,  because  the  camels 
used  to  rub  against  the  telegraph-poles  and  knock  them 


SIR  HENRY  MORTIMER  DURAND     157 

down,  and  the  country  is  covered  with  a  tangle  of 
wires.  But  with  this  frightful  and  clever  invention  of 
Marconi's,  even  that  solace  is  taken  away  from  those 
out  there. 

As  I  have  touched  on  the  subject  of  Persia,  one  thing 
I  should  like  to  say  that  may  possibly  interest  you, 
which  has  just  occurred  to  me;  and  that  is  that  you 
might  like  to  know  something  of  the  estimation  in  which 
the  poet  Omar  Khayyam  is  held  in  his  own  country. 
Of  course,  we  all  know,  between  friends,  that  Fitzgerald 
has  made  him  in  English.  The  question  is  whether 
Omar  Khayyam  is  equal  to  Fitzgerald,  and  that  is  an 
other  thing.  I  suppose  I  am  hardly  sufficient  of  a  Per 
sian  scholar  to  judge.  I  read  him  in  the  original,  but  a 
man  must  be  an  absolute  master,  in  my  judgment,  of  a 
language  to  enable  him  to  judge  of  its  poetry.  And  I 
can  tell  you  that  the  Persians  themselves  do  not  regard 
Omar  Khayyam  as  one  of  the  first  poets. 

I  remember,  when  the  great  Shah  was  alive,  that  some 
British  association  inquired  of  me  as  to  the  sending  of 
money  to  repair  the  poet's  tomb.  I  spoke  to  the  Shah 
about  it.  He  was  a  very  merry  monarch,  and  he  leaned 
back  and  roared  with  laughter.  I  asked  him  to  aid  in 
the  repairs.  He  said:  "No,  not  one  crown  (which  was 
about  ten  cents) ;  we  have  hundreds  of  poets  better  than 
Omar  Khayyam;  he  is  nothing  at  all."  I  don't  think 
that  is  really  the  universal  judgment,  but  that  was  the 
Shah's. 

Now,  gentlemen,  I  am  not  going  to  say  much  more. 
But  before  I  sit  down,  will  you  allow  a  man  who  comes 
from  the  land  of  the  lotos— India— to  lay  one  white 
flower  of  gratitude  on  the  grave  of  an  American  poet? 


158  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

I  owe  a  great  deal  of  the  pleasure  of  my  life  to  Ameri 
can  writers,  from  Bryant  down  to  that  candid  friend 
of  my  country,  the  editor  of  Life,  whose  paper  has 
given  me  a  great  many  laughing  half-hours  in  Persia 
and  India  and  other  parts  of  the  world;  but  I  owe  a 
great  deal  more  than  pleasure  to  one. 

Times  pass  and  fashions  change,  and  I  am  told  that 
the  power  of  Longfellow  is  gone,  that  his  poetry  is  no 
longer  read  as  it  used  to  be.  In  my  own  country,  peo 
ple  have  asked  me  whether  the  rivers  of  Damascus 
were  not  better  than  all  the  others  of  Persia,  whether 
the  poems  of  Longfellow  were  not  better  than  all  the 
verses  of  Lowell,  and  Whittier,  and  others.  I  don't 
mean  to  say  a  word  against  any  of  them.  Far  be  it 
from  me.  I  love  them  all,  but  one  was  the  master  of 
them  all.  Some  reason  for  this  can  be  found  possibly 
in  early  association,  but  Longfellow  has  always  spoken 
to  my  heart.  I  have  often  sought  sympathy,  in  joy  and 
in  sorrow : 

Not  from  the  grand  old  masters, 

Not  from  the  bards  sublime; 
Whose  distant  footsteps  echo 

In  the  corridors  of  time, 

but  from  that  gentle,  universal  spirit. 

In  conclusion,  I  want  to  thank  you  very  warmly,  Mr. 
President,  for  your  kindly  words,  and  you  all  for  the 
warmth  with  which  you  have  received  your  president's 
toast.  I  am  sure  you  all  know  how  entirely  I  agree  with 
all  that  was  said  with  regard  to  the  unity  of  our  great 
race.  There  is  nothing  in  the  world  that  I  desire  now, 
or  that  I  have  desired  all  my  life,  or  nearly  all  my  life, 


SIR  HENRY  MORTIMER  DURAND     159 

more  than  to  see  England  and  America  stand  together. 
I  don't  mean  by  any  alliance,  nothing  of  that  kind  is  in 
the  slightest  degree  necessary;  what  is  wanted  is  what 
has  come,  thank  God,  that  our  people  understand  one 
another,  and  believe  in  one  another,  and  I  trust  that  it 
will  always  be  so. 


HENEY  VAN  DYKE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  SIE  HENEY  MOETIMEE  DUEAND, 
JANUAEY  20,  1904 

IF  the  reading  of  the  introduction  to  the  "Speeches 
at  the  Lotos  Club"  is  sufficient  to  enable  a  man  to 
make  such  a  delightful  address  as  that  made  by  the 
British  Ambassador  to-night,  it  should  be  put  in  the 
hands  of  every  school-boy  in  the  land. 

I  am  heartily  glad,  Mr.  President,  to  find  myself 
again  among  the  guests  of  the  Lotos  Club.  The  weather 
since  I  was  here  last  has  not  been  exactly  favorable  to 
common  or  garden  flowers.  In  the  financial  world 
there  have  been  floods,  and  the  stock-market  has  been 
inundated.  But  the  Lotos  lives  upon  the  water.  In 
the  political  world  there  have  been  cold  days,  and  the 
low-lying  flowers  have  been  frozen  out.  But  the  Lotos 
diffuses  around  itself  a  delightful  atmosphere  of  sum 
mer. 

This  club  represents  the  spirit  of  good  fellowship, 
pure  and  simple;  the  spirit  of  genuine  and  non-com 
mercial  hospitality.  And  I  think  it  very  well  for  us  to 
remember  that  our  common  life  would  not  be  enjoyable 
or  even  endurable  unless  that  spirit  were  kept  alive, 
and  the  men  of  different  parties  could  all  gather  at 
times  and  feel  that  they  had  some  common  ground 
where  they  could  meet  one  another  and  get  together, 

160 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  161 

without  having  to  keep  one  eye  on  the  main  chance, 
political  or  commercial.  It  is  pleasant  to  find  a  place 
where  the  traveler  can  tell  his  wondrous  tales  without 
an  affidavit ;  and  the  fisherman  can  describe  the  weight 
of  his  fish  without  a  scale;  and  the  diplomatist  can 
reveal  to  us  those  secrets  which  we  know  already;  and 
the  clergyman  can  tell  us  what  he  does  when  he  is  n't 
writing  sermons;  and  the  college  president  can  tell  us 
how  he  feels  when  he  is  n't  thinking  of  how  to  raise 
more  money;  and  the  actor  can  explain  to  us  how  he 
has  been  educated  by  the  critics  and  the  public;  and 
the  painter  can  tell  us  how  much  the  old  masters  have 
borrowed  from  him;  and  the  author  can  explain  to  us 
that  the  reason  why  his  last  book  did  n't  have  a  larger 
sale  is  because  it  was  so  much  above  the  level  of  the 
public  taste.  We  all  of  us  have  our  little  weaknesses, 
and  it  is  very  agreeable  to  have  a  place  like  this  where 
we  can  let  them  out  without  being  indicted  for  a  mis 
demeanor  or  nominated  for  office. 

Mr.  President,  our  guest  of  to-night  comes  from  a 
race  that  believes  in  this  sort  of  thing.  Englishmen 
make  some  of  the  most  scholarly,  charming  speeches  in 
the  world,  although  they  cannot  be  correctly  described 
as  an  effusive  or  garrulous  race.  But  they  have  that 
instinct  of  comradeship  which  makes  it  possible  for 
gentlemen  of  different  opinions  to  talk  together  in 
clubs,  and  which  preserves,  in  the  midst  of  the  fierce 
and  perilous  strain  of  modern  life,  a  social  sphere 
where  the  knights  joust  with  blunted  weapons  and 
afterward  sit  down  and  make  merry  together. 

A  great  many  things  have  been  said  to  you,  Mr. 
Ambassador,  since  you  have  been  in  this  country,  in 


162  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

regard  to  the  fact  that  England  and  America  are 
bound  together  by  the  use  of  the  same  language,  that 
they  have  the  same  history,  the  same  literature,  and 
that  their  conditions  are  very  similar.  You  have  been 
reminded  that  America  is  a  great  country,  and  Eng 
land  is  also  a  great  country ;  that  the  Anglo-Saxon  race 
is  the  dominant  race  in  the  world,  and  that  we  are 
"It";  that  we  mean  well  by  every  other  race,  and  all 
the  other  races  must  make  way  for  us.  A  great  many 
things  have  been  said  to  you  to-night;  but  I  have  not 
observed  a  single  remark  among  those  which  have  been 
addressed  to  you  about  just  one  that  seems  to  me  im 
portant—that  is,  the  instinct  of  comradeship  which  is 
in  the  Englishman,  that  makes  a  good  friend,  a  loyal 
companion,  on  the  burning  deserts  of  Persia,  or  any 
where  else  in  the  world.  That  instinct  of  comradeship 
survives  on  this  side  of  the  water.  It  has  had  a  hard 
time  to  live,  a  strenuous  time,  but  it  has  survived,  and 
there  is  a  social  sphere  here  where  you  can  meet  and 
speak  freely,  and  have  a  friendly  hearing,  and  the 
profits  will  be  equally  divided  all  around. 

The  visitor  who  takes  time  can  find  this  sphere  in 
America.  Dickens,  I  think,  failed  to  find  it,  because 
he  did  n't  take  time.  But  Thackeray  found  it,  as  we 
know  from  those  charming  letters  which  are  just  now 
coming  out ;  and  your  well-beloved  predecessor  in  your 
high  office  found  it.  I  hope  you  will  find  it,  and  like  it 
so  much  that  you  will  stay  here  for  the  rest  of  your  life. 

When  an  American  has  to  make  a  speech  to  an  Eng 
lishman,  he  feels  somewhat  as  if  he  were  talking  to 
himself.  The  Englishman  would  share  that  feeling 
more  fully  if  the  speech  were  shorter.  I  think  that 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  163 

one  of  the  best  things  that  American  inventiveness 
could  be  turned  to  now  would  be  the  providing  of  an 
apparatus  (for  which  I  should  like  to  apply  for  a 
patent)— an  after-dinner  oubliette,  a  series  of  trap 
doors  arranged  around  the  guest  table  with  electric 
attachments,  and  with  buttons  for  the  president  to 
press.  Then,  when  a  speech  had  reached  the  limit  and 
was  growing  tiresome,  he  could  simply  touch  the  but 
ton,  and  the  guest  would  slide  quietly  out  of  sight  to 
continue  his  remarks  in  the  grill-room;  and  when  any 
guest  or  speaker  began  to  sharpen  a  political  axe,  with 
the  patience  of  his  audience  as  a  grindstone,  he  might 
be  precipitated  into  utter  darkness. 

But  why  should  a  man  make  a  long  speech  on  the  tie 
that  binds  England  and  America?  It  can  all  be  said 
in  a  sentence:  one  race,  one  language,  one  desire;  we 
stand  together  for  liberty  and  order  upon  the  earth. 


WAYNE  McVEAGH 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  SIR  HENRY  MORTIMER  DURAND, 
JANUARY  20,  1904 

r INHERE  was  just  one  amendment  to  Dr.  Van  Dyke's 
A  proposal  that  I  would  have  liked  to  have  offered, 
and  that  was  that  there  never  should  be  more  than 
three  after-dinner  speeches  on  the  same  evening;  one 
by  the  chairman,  and  one  by  the  two  principal  guests 
of  the  evening;  that  the  rest  of  us  might  enjoy  our 
dinner  in  peace  and  love,  without  having  to  mar  the 
enjoyment  of  our  fellow-guests. 

But,  gentlemen,  it  is  always  so  great  a  pleasure  to  be 
the  guest  of  the  Lotos  Club,  that  one  unconsciously 
becomes  garrulous,  and  forgets  that  the  moments  are 
slipping  away  as  he  looks  into  your  hospitable  faces 
and  remembers  how  much  this  club  has  done  for  that 
very  best  form  of  American  hospitality.  It  is  a  source 
of  shining  pride  for  every  hearty  American  to  know 
that  here  in  the  commercial  metropolis  of  the  nation 
is  a  club  to  which  every  distinguished  guest  of  the  coun 
try  is  glad  to  come,  and  where  you  are  glad  to  receive 
him  and  make  him  welcome.  In  that  respect  your 
hospitality  is  quite  unique ;  and  I  am  always  glad  and 
happy  to  come  here  and  join  in  doing  honor  to  any 
guest  whom  you  may  select  to  distinguish  by  your  hos 
pitality. 

164 


WAYNE  McVEAGH  165 

When  I  was  last  here,  it  was  the  Chinese  Minister. 
He  was  a  delightful  person,  but  did  n't  quite  under 
stand  the  lingual  capacities  of  your  president.  And  in 
that  respect  I  differ  from  His  Excellency,  the  Ambas 
sador.  I  don 't  think  it  is  at  all  necessary  to  be  familiar 
with  a  language  in  order  to  enjoy  it  to  the  fullest  ex 
tent.  Your  president  addresses  distinguished  members 
of  the  French  Academy  in  New  York  French.  He  has 
the  admirable  warrant  of  Shakespeare  long  ago,  who 
knew  and  did  speak  the  French  of  Stratford.  And  the 
learned  gentlemen  who  come  here  from  the  universities 
of  Germany— he  addresses  them  in  Pennsylvania  Ger 
man. 

Well,  the  Minister  asked  me  what  language  he  was 
speaking  in  addressing  him.  I  said :  "He  is  now  speak 
ing  your  own  language. "  And  he  said:  "He  must 
have  learned  it  from  the  tea-chests."  And  while  we 
are  on  literature,  I  would  like  to  follow  up  a  remark  of 
the  Ambassador  in  that  respect.  He  did  us  all  the 
kindness  to  speak  in  terms  of  affection  and  regard  of  a 
poet  very  near  the  hearts  of  all  Americans,  whose 
poetry  has  been  charming  two  generations  of  his  coun 
trymen,  and  whose  name,  I  am  glad  to  think,  is  still  a 
household  word.  Longfellow's  fame  will  never  die  out 
of  the  hearts  of  the  American  nation. 

But  I  was  about  to  say,  with  the  superciliousness  of 
an  Englishman  he  put  Shakespeare  above  Longfellow. 
I  am  very  sure  he  has  never  heard  the  story  of  the  Bos 
ton  gentleman  who,  having  read  for  the  first  time  that 
tragedy  which  Shelley  called  the  supreme  effort  of 
human  genius,  at  once  universal,  ideal,  and  sublime, 
the  tragedy  of  "Lear,"  laid  it  down  and  said— he  had 


166  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

no  insular  narrowness  about  him— "That  man  is  a 
clever  writer. ' '  And  with  the  generosity  natural  to  an 
American  and  a  Bostonian,  he  said  he  did  n't  believe 
there  were  over  twenty  literary  men  in  Boston  who 
could  have  written  it. 

But  after  all,  to-night  is  dedicated  to  diplomacy.  We 
have  not  heard  many  secrets,  but  those  we  never  hear 
from  diplomatists,  because  they  have  n't  any.  That  I 
learned  long  ago,  and  my  first  essay  in  that  profession 
was  when  I  was  a  much  quicker  man  than  I  am  now. 
It  was  at  a  period  of  very  great  excitement.  I  was  at 
Constantinople— the  famous  winter  when  the  Black 
Sea  Treaty  was  revised.  I  learned  then  that  there 
were  hardly  any  secrets  in  diplomacy,  and  those  there 
were  were  not  confided  to  the  diplomatists.  His  Ex 
cellency  heartily  agrees  with  me. 


E.  FRANCIS  HYDE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  EICHAED  STRAUSS, 
MARCH  19,  1904 

YOU  are  all  doubtless  familiar  with  the  fact  that 
some  years  ago  there  was  proposed  a  universal 
language,  a  sad  effort  which  died  almost  still-born. 
The  author  of  it  forgot  that  there  was  already  one  uni 
versal  language,  that  of  music,  and  I  rejoice  that  to 
night  I  have  the  honor  of  being  present  in  the  company 
of  one  of  the  great  preachers  of  that  language  to  us  as 
citizens  of  the  world,  Dr.  Richard  Strauss. 

A  few  minutes  ago,  when  I  listened  to  the  perform 
ance  by  Mr.  Arnold  and  Mr.  Jellico  of  that  charming 
duet  composed  by  the  guest  of  the  club,  I  was  indiffer 
ent,  and  when  I  shall  listen  in  a  few  moments,  as  we 
shall,  all  of  us,  to  our  friend  Bispham  singing  his  songs, 
I  shall  be  indifferent  as  to  whether  they  are  sung  in 
German  or  any  other  language,  because  the  language 
which  the  creator  of  those  songs  has  put  into  them 
appeals  to  our  hearts  and  tells  the  story  of  the  genius 
that  inspired  them.  I  have  at  home  a  chronological 
table  that  I  worked  out  myself;  it  has  stretching  along 
it  the  names  of  the  composers  of  the  ages.  Commenc 
ing  at  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  there  is 
Johann  Sebastian  Bach,  as  the  representative  of  that 
age.  Coming  down  toward  the  end  of  that  century, 

167 


168  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

there  are  Haydn,  Mozart,  and  Handel  as  the  represen 
tatives  of  that  age.  Beginning  with  the  last  century, 
there  is  Beethoven,  and  so  on  down.  The  chronological 
table  for  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  has 
not  been  made  yet,  but  when  it  is,  I  shall  find  that 
stretching  across  the  line  marking  the  beginning  of  that 
century  will  be  the  name  of  Richard  Strauss,  for  this  is 
the  era  of  Richard  Strauss.  He  is  the  prophet  of  the 
time. 

We  sometimes  think  "How  can  there  be  anything 
new  in  music  ? ' '  And  as  an  answer  to  that,  we  have  a 
demonstration  of  something  entirely  new  in  every  re 
spect  ;  we  have  in  the  works  of  Dr.  Strauss  a  new  form 
of  composition.  Take  the  ' '  Heldenleben, "  something 
never  before  thought  of,  with  its  long  storied  symphony, 
comprising  the  whole  life  of  man  in  one  picture.  Then 
we  have  his  wonderful  use  of  the  orchestra,  and,  as 
something  entirely  new,  his  use  of  old  instruments  and 
his  introduction  of  new  instruments.  If  a  musician 
carefully  follows  the  directions  of  Richard  Strauss,  he 
can  produce  effects  never  thought  of  before,  simply  by 
adapting  his  instruments  to  Dr.  Strauss 's  direction. 
Then  there  is  that  wonderful  idyllic  beauty  which 
abounds  in  Dr.  Strauss 's  compositions.  Then  there 
are  those  extraordinary,  you  might  say,  dissonances, 
which  he  has  created,  and  which  to  me  constitute  the 
greatest  part  of  his  genius.  To  me  he  is  not  only, 
as  has  been  said,  the  greatest  humorist  in  music,  but 
he  is  the  greatest  representative  and  demonstrator 
of  what  I  call  light  and  shadow  in  music.  He  is 
the  Turner  of  musical  compositions.  I  have  often 
read  what  Ruskin  said  of  Turner's  works:  "You  al- 


E.  FRANCIS  HYDE  169 

ways  find  the  brightest  lights  conjoined  with  the 
darkest  shadows."  And  looking  over  Ruskin's  book 
' '  Rivers  of  France, ' '  you  will  see  how  he  describes ;  how 
the  whole  picture  is  illuminated  by  throwing  bright 
lights  against  dark  shadows.  And  to  my  mind,  as  I 
have  listened  to  the  works  of  Dr.  Strauss,  I  have  seen 
that  continually,  how  the  lights  are  always  illuminated 
and  brought  out  and  accentuated  by  these  dark  dis 
sonances,  these  shades,  which  he  has  above  all  other 
men  the  power  of  manipulating  with  such  poetic  beauty, 
with  the  making  of  new  forms,  of  chords  to  be  resolved 
into  harmonies  by  exquisite  resolutions,  in  order  to 
bring  out  the  whole  beautiful  effect  of  his  work.  That 
to  me  is  the  greatest  manifestation  of  Dr.  Strauss 's 
genius.  I  hope,  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  there  are  still 
in  Dr.  Strauss 's  imagination  new  creations  that  we 
shall  listen  to;  and  so  to-night,  "Long  life  to  Dr. 
Strauss  for  renewed  additions  to  the  wealth  of  music 
which  he  has  already  given  us,  and  long  life  to  us  all, 
that  we  may  be  here  to  listen  to  them. ' ' 


SIMEON  FOED 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  GEOEGE  B.  McCLELLAN 

(MAYOR  OF  THE  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK), 
MAECH  25,  1904 

A  FEW  weeks  ago,  at  Palm  Beach,  I  was  walking  on 
the  pier,  when  a  man  dashed  up,  called  me  by 
name,  and  wrung  me  warmly  by  the  hand.  Now  I  have 
lived  opposite  the  Grand  Central  Depew  so  long  that  I 
have  become  rather  suspicious  of  these  hand-shakers, 
and  I  presume  my  greeting  was  somewhat  distant  and 
haughty,  for  the  stranger  said:  "I  see  you  don't  recog 
nize  me. ' '  I  gave  him  the  old  gag  about  his  face  being 
perfectly  familiar,  but  I  could  n't  place  him.  "Why," 
he  said,  "you  delivered  a  magnificent  oration  in  my 
honor  at  the  Lotos  Club  last  winter.  I  am  Elihu  Root. ' ' 
Well,  if  there  had  been  a  convenient  knot-hole 
around,  I  'd  have  dropped  through.  And  yet,  how  can 
I  be  expected  to  remember  all  the  people  I  eulogize  in 
this  taffy-factory  and  soft-soap  dispensary?  When 
Chester  Lord  orders  me  to  come  and  eulogize  a  man, 
why,  I  come  and  eulogize  him,  without  regard  to  race, 
color,  or  previous  condition  of  inebriety,  and  when  I 
have  gotten  through  with  my  eulogy,  I  just  go  on  about 
my  business.  I  don't  pay  any  particular  attention  to 
the  guest  of  honor,  or  try  to  impress  his  likeness  upon 
my  memory.  I  don't  have  time.  As  I  explained  to 

170 


SIMEON  FORD  171 

Mr.  Boot:  I  said,  "You  men— cabinet  officers,  mayors, 
and  such— are  but  the  creatures  of  an  hour.  You  have 
dinners  tendered  you,  and  bouquets  thrown  at  you,  and 
laurel  wreaths  placed  on  your  brows,  but  it  's  funny 
what  a  difference  a  few  hours  make.  The  next  thing  we 
know  you  are  out  of  a  job,  and  back  at  the  old  stand 
looking  for  law  business. ' ' 

And  then  these  guests  of  honor  look  so  different  when 
you  get  them  outside.  Take  them  away  from  the  center 
of  the  stage  and  the  glare  of  the  calcium,  and  that 
drawn  and  haggard  look  disappears,  and  they  appear 
just  like  human  beings. 

Speaking  of  Palm  Beach :  this  was  my  first  visit,  and, 
in  my  opinion,  it  is  an  earthly  paradise,  and  I  paid  my 
board  too,  just  like  anybody  else.  When  I  left  New 
York  the  mercury  was  having  one  of  those  sinking 
spells  which  have  been  so  prevalent  this  winter,  and  I 
was  swathed  in  furs  and  jaegers,  and  chilblains,  and 
my  nose  was  working  overtime. 

Forty  hours  later,  my  dimpled  form  arrayed  in  a  cute 
little  bathing-suit,  I  was  disporting  myself  in  the  flash 
ing  waters  of  the  Atlantic,  surrounded  by  society  ladies, 
ladies  who  are  not  in  society,  ladies  who  are  trying  to 
butt  into  society,  millionaires,  politicians,  and  other 
tropical  amphibia. 

As  I  looked  about  me  and  recognized  the  members 
of  the  Four  Hundred,  of  whom  I  have  so  often  read, 
people  whose  names  are  household  words  in  each 
other's  households,  I  felt  proud  to  think  that  I  lived 
in  this  free  land  where  it  was  my  privilege  to  bathe 
in  the  same  swells  with  these  swells.  I  was  afraid 
to  venture  in  at  first,  for  fear  of  the  sharks  which  are 


172  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

said  to  infest  these  waters,  but  the  bathing-master  as 
sured  me  that  as  soon  as  the  Wall  Street  men  came 
down  the  local  talent  took  to  flight. 

Palm  Beach  is  well  named.  There  is  a  palm  on  every 
hand,  and  especially  on  the  hands  of  the  colored  em 
ployes,  and  they  are  continually  waving,  thus  creating 
a  gentle  draught  on  the  pocket-book.  Every  time  you 
turn  around  you  are  held  up  by  a  colored  bandit  with 
a  seductive  smile  and  a  productive  whisk-broom,  and 
his  battle-cry  is,  "No  quarter,  nothing  less  than  half 
a  dollar." 

They  keep  the  pot  boiling  down  there,  and  the  lid  is 
off,  and  you  can  look  right  in.  They  have  a  club  where 
you  can  play  games  of  chance.  But  they  are  not  really 
games  of  chance ;  they  are  sure  things.  I  tried  it.  You 
pick  a  number,  and  put  a  dollar  or  two  on  it,  and  if  the 
marble  rolls  right,  you  get  thirty-five  for  one.  But  I 
proved  to  be  a  poor  picker.  Still  you  do  have  a  chance, 
and  that  beats  Wall  Street,  where  you  have  no  chance 
at  all.  I  believe  if  Wall  Street  was  shut  up,  and  Can- 
field's  opened,  we  could  all  have  more  fun  with  our 
money.  I  Ve  tried  both,  and  I  know  what  I  'm  talking 
about.  You  get  broken  on  the  wheel,  either  way. 

I  think  we  Ve  got  a  great  little  Mayor.  I  like  his 
looks.  He  looks  clean-cut,  well-groomed,  and  trained  to 
the  minute.  He  comes  of  good  stock.  He  has  started  in 
right.  Some  of  us  who  did  n't  vote  for  him  had  an  idea 
that  when  he  was  elected  the  city  would  at  once  become 
a  sort  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah.  Instead  of  that,  the 
minute  he  got  in  he  took  his  new  broom  and  began  to 
sweep,  and  apparently  his  sainted  predecessor  had  left 
quite  a  little  dirt  around  in  the  corners. 


SIMEON  FORD  173 

He  advocated  more  water  for  New  York.  Think  of 
a  Tammany  man  interesting  himself  in  water!  And 
now  they  talk  about  him  for  President.  This  is  a  great 
country.  One  day  a  man  is  a  quiet  citizen  pursuing  the 
even  tenor  of  his  way,  and  the  next  day  he  wakes  up 
and  finds  himself  a  Peerless  Leader,  with  a  capital  P. 
I  hope  to  wake  up  some  day  and  find  myself  a  peerless 
leader,  and  then,  I  suppose  I  '11  wake  up. 


WILLIAM  H.  McELEOY 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  GEOEGE  B.  McCLELLAN 

(MAYOR  OF  THE  CITY  OF  NEW  YORK), 
MAECH  25,  1904 

I  HAVE  never  tried  to  analyze  why,  but  for  some 
reason  or  another  I  take  very  kindly  to  a  fellow-man 
whose  name  begins  with  "Me."    The  ancient  saw  tells 
us  that  "it  is  good  to  begin  well."    A  name  which  be 
gins  with  * '  Me ' '  has  an  auspicious  start. 

It  is  always  pleasant  to  dine  with  the  Lotos  Club,  for 
it  has  a  veritable  genius  for  good  fellowship.  In  its 
way— and  an  interesting  way  it  is— the  Lotos  is 
one  of  the  greatest  forums  of  which  the  city  of  New 
York  can  boast.  To-day  I  turned  the  pages  of  the  book 
made  up  of  speeches  delivered  at  the  Lotos.  Where  else 
in  this  country,  or  in  any  other  country,  will  you  find 
postprandial  creations  to  match  them  ?  And  what  good 
cheer  goes  with  the  good  talk !  The  club  serves  its  hos 
pitality,  as  it  does  its  wine,  in  magnums.  As  I  look 
about  me  and  within  me  I  recall  a  number  of  your 
famous  feasts.  That,  for  example,  was  a  brilliant  oc 
casion  when  Sir  Edwin  Arnold  was  the  guest  of  honor. 
You  presided,  Mr.  President  Lawrence,  in  your  own 
unrivaled  style.  Arnold  made  a  speech  as  graceful  and 
felicitous  as  it  was  appropriate,  and  concluded,  as 
many  of  you  will  recall,  by  reading  one  of  his  own 

174 


WILLIAM  H.  MCELROY  175 

poems— a  picturesque,  piquant,  and  highly  impassioned 
effort,  redolent  of  the  life  of  the  sensuous  Orient. 
There  was  a  playful  passage  at  arms  at  this  dinner 
which  I  venture  to  mention.  When  Sir  Edwin  had  con 
cluded  President  Lawrence  presented  as  the  next 
speaker  that  great  master  of  our  English  tongue,  St. 
Clair  McKelway.  Seth  Low  had  spoken  earlier,  and  in 
a  eulogy  of  Arnold's  career  had  referred  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  been  not  only  a  distinguished  poet  but  a 
distinguished  journalist  as  well.  "There  is  no  reason 
why  he  should  not  successfully  have  pursued  both  of 
these  professions,"  said  Mr.  Low,  slyly,  "since  the 
imagination  plays  a  large  part  in  journalism  as  well  as 
in  poetry."  In  the  course  of  his  capital  speech,  Mr. 
McKelway,  replying  to  Mr.  Low,  observed:  "Yes, 
imagination  has  a  good  deal  to  do  with  both  the  pro 
fession  of  the  poet  and  the  profession  of  the  journalist, 
and  it  may  be  that  if  the  journalists  of  Brooklyn  had 
not  let  their  imaginations  loose,  Mr.  Low  would  not 
have  been  elected  Mayor  of  Brooklyn. ' '  To  the  laughter 
which  followed  this  sally  Mr.  Low  was  a  generous  con 
tributor. 

I  am  glad  of  this  golden  opportunity  of  paying  my 
respects  to  the  guest  of  the  evening,  Mayor  George  B. 
McClellan.  I  was  not  of  those  who  supported  him  in 
his  canvass  for  the  exalted  office  which  he  now  fills. 
Somebody  tells  of  a  Southern  colored  brother  who, 
directly  after  the  funeral  of  his  fifth  wife,  was  asked 
by  his  pastor  how  he  was  bearing  this  latest  affliction 
which  had  smitten  him.  "Dominie,"  replied  the  fre 
quent  widower,  "I  feel  that  I  am  in  the  hands  of  an 
all-wise  but  unscrupulous  Providence."  Now  Mr.  Me- 


176  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Clellan's  election  by  no  means— by  no  means  made  me 
feel  as  that  colored  brother  felt.  But  as  a  dyed-in-the- 
wool  Republican  I  naturally  wanted  to  see  the  Repub 
lican  candidate  win.  Nevertheless,  while  frankly 
stating  this,  let  me  add  that,  not  grudgingly,  but  heart 
ily,  as  one  should  bow  who  believes  in  the  rule  of  the 
majority,  I  said,  "Amen,"  to  Mayor  McClellan 's  elec 
tion.  We  Americans,  supporters  of  a  government  of  the 
people,  sharply  antagonize  one  another  during  a  cam 
paign,  but  good-naturedly  ignore  party  differences 
after  it  is  over.  That  is  the  American  spirit  as  applied 
to  politics.  While  as  yet  our  present  mayor  was  simply 
candidate  McClellan,  we  Republicans  fought  him  be 
cause  he  was  "our  friend  the  enemy."  But  when  he 
became  the  elect  of  the  people,  the  mayor  not  of  or  for 
a  party,  but  of  and  for  all  New-Yorkers,  then,  without 
regard  to  party  lines,  the  time  had  arrived  for  partisan 
opposition  to  him  to  cease,  and  we  all  became  McClellan 
men.  And  now,  as  a  last  word,  I  beg  to  assure  Mayor 
McClellan  that  he  has  only  to  administer  his  office  with 
an  eye  single  to  the  genuine  progress  and  prosperity  of 
our  metropolis,  to  command  the  hearty  support  of  pub 
lic-spirited  citizens,  whatever  may  be  their  party  affilia 
tions.  They  will  be  loyal  to  Mayor  McClellan  so  long  as 
Mayor  McClellan  is  loyal  to  New  York. 


JOHN  MOELEY 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  NOVEMBER  25,  1904 

rflHIS  is  positively,  positively,  my  last  appearance 
JL  upon  any  American  public  stage.  You,  to  the  last, 
show  me  the  same  cordial  kindness  that  has  been  ex 
tended  to  me  in  Pittsburg,  in  Chicago,  and  at  other 
companies  in  New  York.  I  don't  deserve  either  the 
language  that  was  used  of  me,  as  I  understand,  by  Mr. 
Choate  last  night  in  London,  or  the  language  used  by 
your  president  to-night.  I  don't  at  all  profess  to  de 
serve  it ;  and  I  don't  think  I  do. 

I  do  deserve  it,  however,  in  this  sense,  that  there  is 
no  man  on  my  side  of  the  water  who  is  more  in  earnest 
in  believing  that  the  best  interests  of  mankind  will  be 
best  served  by  good  feeling,  which  is  far  more,  as  your 
president  has  said,  far  more  than  parchment  treaties, 
the  good  feeling  of  the  people,  whether  of  Usona,  or 
whatever  your  name  may  ultimately  be,  or  the  people 
of  a  country  the  name  of  which  I  hope  is  not  going  to 
be  altered,  the  people  of  Great  Britain. 

These  nicknames  provoke  retaliation;  and  I  tremble 
when  I  think  of  what  some  vindictive  American  may 
say  in  response  to  Sir  Edward  Clarke's  somewhat  in 
felicitous  suggestion.  I  have  made  a  mere  scamper 
over  your  great  country,  but  I  have  seen  a  good  deal; 
and  after  all  the  alternative  is  between  a  short  visit, 

177 


178  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

such  as  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  paying,  and  a  resi 
dence  of  two  or  three  or  four  years.  For  any  man  to 
pretend  that  with  anything  less  than  a  residence  of 
months,  or  even  years,  he  can  solve  problems  which  you 
who  live  here  always  are  not  quite  ready  to  solve  right 
off,  is  really  too  absurd. 

I  think  I  have  been  able  in  my  short  visit  to  do  three 
things.  First,  to  perceive  what  are  the  questions  and 
what  are  the  problems  which  will  engage  your  attention 
perhaps  for  the  rest  of  my  life,  at  all  events.  Second, 
to  perceive  the  possible  paths  along  which  you  may  be 
able  to  travel  toward  the  solution  of  those  problems. 
And,  third,  I  have  been  singularly  happy  in  being  able 
to  make  the  acquaintance  of  a  great  number  of  per 
sonalities  in  the  United  States  who  must  exercise  in 
their  various  spheres,  from  the  very  highest,  down 
ward,  I  was  going  to  say  down  to  the  presidents  of 
universities  [turning  to  President  Butler  of  Columbia] . 
I  have  had  the  honor  and  the  pleasure  of  making,  I 
hope,  a  cordial,  certainly  on  my  part  a  cordial  acquain 
tance  with  those  personalities  who  will  have  no  small 
share,  but  a  great  and  decisive  share  in  molding  the 
future  destinies  of  this  great  country. 

Now,  something  has  been  said  by  the  president  of  my 
having  written  things,  and  my  having  taken  a  part  in 
public  affairs.  Yes,  it  is  true,  I  have  written  too 
many  things.  And  the  president  said,  too  kindly 
said,  that  I  was  greatly  admired  in  my  own  country.  I 
cannot  discuss  that  question  for  obvious  reasons,  but  I 
would  point  out  this.  When  the  president  says  that  I 
have  taken  a  part  in  public  affairs,  it  is  true.  I  think 
I  have  been  for  twenty-one  or  twenty-two  years  a  mem- 


JOHN  MORLEY  179 

her  of  the  House  of  Commons,  and  through  those 
twenty-one  years  the  country  which  so  greatly  admires 
me  has  left  me  planted  on  the  wrong  side  of  the  speak 
er's  chair.  It  is  therefore  a  great  admiration,  with 
some  limitation. 

But  we  are  now  on  the  eve  of  a  great  event,  such  as 
you  have  just  recently  passed  through  in  this  country ; 
and  I  feel  with  considerable  confidence  that  as  to  the 
next  few  years,  so  many  of  them  as  I  am  spared  for,  the 
situation  on  the  side  of  our  speaker's  chair  will  be  com 
pletely  and  most  satisfactorily  altered.  But  whatever 
turn  that  may  take,  I  do  believe  I  may  fairly  say, 
speaking  not  merely  for  one  of  those  miserable  subdi 
visions  of  a  country  called  a  party,  but  speaking  for 
both  parties  in  my  country,  whoever  sits  on  the  right 
of  the  speaker,  or  on  the  left  of  the  speaker,  there  is  on 
both  sides  of  the  House  of  Commons  an  enduring,  thor 
ough  resolution,  if  you  will  let  us,  to  be  absolutely  good 
friends  with  the  government  of  the  United  States,  and 
to  take  a  part  side  by  side  and  shoulder  to  shoulder 
with  the  United  States  in  promoting  the  great  common 
causes,  which  are  the  causes  of  human  civilization. 

But,  gentlemen,  don't  let  us  be  too  exclusive.  I  my 
self  don't  find  the  satisfaction  which  I  believe  many  of 
you  find  with  the  prospect  of  three  fifths,  if  that  be  the 
right  fraction,  of  the  human  race  being  of  Anglo-Saxon 
origin  within  a  certain  number  of  years;  it  does  n't 
much  matter  to  me  what  those  years  are.  But  I  don't 
find  any  perfect  satisfaction  in  that. 

The  important  thing  is  not  that  the  English-speaking 
race  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  or  on  my  side,  should 
have  an  intellectual  and  moral  primacy,  but  should 


180  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

enter  into  a  generous  emulation  with  France,  and  with 
Germany,  and  with  Italy  in  bringing  mankind  at  large 
in  a  primacy,  covering  a  great  many  more  elements 
than  we  English-speaking  people  shall  be  able  to 
cover. 

Your  president  refers  to  things  I  have  written,  and, 
as  it  happens,  many  of  my  writings  have  dealt  with 
events  that  have  turned  upon  the  genius  of  France. 
Mankind  cannot  do,  in  my  opinion,  without  the  con 
tributions  which  the  genius  of  France  makes  to  the 
cause  of  civilization. 

I  confess  that  I  have  always  said  that  successful 
diplomacy  for  me  greatly  depends  upon  two  things, 
and  I  hope  no  German  friend  of  mine  will  take  offense, 
first,  a  good  understanding  with  the  United  States; 
and,  second,  a  good  understanding  with  France. 

You  represent,  as  I  understand,  a  most  distinguished 
section  or  number  of  sections  of  intellectual  and  other 
forms  of  effort.  I  am  sure  that  politics  are  entirely  an 
intellectual  form  of  effort.  But  you  have  artists,  and 
journalists,  and  writers  in  all  walks  and  degrees.  Well, 
then,  gentlemen,  after  all,  you  represent  the  forces  that 
mold  communities.  The  profession  of  letters,  since 
you,  Mr.  President,  said  something  about  literature  and 
writing,  I  think,  is  in  itself  the  noblest  of  professions. 
It  seems  to  me  that  any  man  who  attempts  to  pur 
sue  the  profession  of  letters  without  keeping  himself 
closely  in  touch,  and  saturated  with  all  the  influence 
of  the  world  around  him,  will  probably  not  write  as 
well  as  if  he  had  taken  part  in  public  affairs;  and  I 
repeat  here  what  I  said  before,  it  has  particular  refer 
ence  to  literature,  I  think,  what  a  better,  older,  and 


JOHN  MORLEY  181 

wiser  man  than  I  said  a  long  while  ago,  it  ought  to  be 
a  part  of  the  religion  of  men  to  see  that  their  country 
is  well  governed.  And  it  is  the  part  of  men  of  letters 
in  the  best  sense  to  see  that  this  is  effected. 

Somebody  said  to  me  to-day,  "Well,  you  have  come 
over  as  a  missionary  in  a  lost  cause. ' ' 

Well,  I  was  greatly  surprised.  I  said,  ' '  No,  I  did  not 
come  as  a  missionary,  and  I  had  no  cause  at  all ;  not  as 
a  missionary,  and  no  cause. ' ' 

"Oh,"  he  said,  "what  is  it— free  trade!" 

"No,  I  have  not  come  over  as  a  missionary.  True,  I 
have  said  a  few  words,  a  word  or  two  about  free  trade" 
— don't  be  alarmed,  gentlemen;  not  a  word  to-night, 
not  a  word. 

I  hope  I  am  not  profane  or  guilty  of  levity  if  I  say 
that  this  remark  of  my  friend  to-day,  that  I  had  come 
over  as  a  missionary  in  the  cause  of  free  trade,  re 
minded  me  of  what  happened  to  Frederick  the  Great. 
In  those  days,  connected  with  the  monarchy  of  Prussia 
was  the  principality  of  Neufchatel,  and  there  they  were 
engaged  in  an  ardent  and  vindictive  dispute,  as  some 
times  happens  to  you.  This  great  controversy  was  on 
what  all  deemed  to  be  the  fundamental  topic  of  eternal 
damnation.  Frederick  the  Great  was  appealed  to  to 
decide  the  matter.  He  listened  to  the  arguments  on 
both  sides,  and  then  considered  the  question.  Finally 
he  said,  "My  decision  is  this:  in  Neufchatel  those  who 
don't  believe  in  eternal  damnation,  so  be  it;  and  those 
who  do  believe  in  eternal  damnation,  let  them  be  eter 
nally  damned." 

Gentlemen,  I  am  sure  you  are  all  too  clever  and  too 
acute  not  to  see  the  application — one  which  I  respect- 


182  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

fully  make  in  a  protectionist  community,  you  being 
protectionists.    Now  I  am  detaining  you  too  long. 

All  I  can  say  is,  I  have  had  such  a  reception  in  va 
rious  parts  of  America :  in  Pittsburg,  which  I  see  is  the 
Gibraltar  of  protection ;  in  Chicago,  which  is  the  Gibral 
tar  of  many  things;  at  Washington,  and  now,  crown 
ing  the  edifice,  in  New  York,  I  have  had  a  reception 
which  I  can  never  forget.  It  will  always  remain.  The 
personalities  that  I  have  made  the  acquaintance  of,  the 
questions  put  in  motion  in  my  mind,  the  enlargement  of 
the  horizons  of  my  poor  political  contemplation,  are 
things  I  can  never  forget;  and  I  beg  to  thank  you  all 
most  cordially  for  your  extreme  kindness  and  joviality 
in  my  respect  to-night. 


NICHOLAS  MUEEAY  BUTLER 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOHN  MORLEY, 
NOVEMBER  25,  1904 

Ethis  distinguished  and  representative  presence, 
jathered  to  do  honor  to  the  scholar  and  statesman 
who  is  your  guest  to-night,  I  am  moved  to  speak  aloud 
the  question  that  I  have  been  putting  to  myself  for  an 
hour  or  more  past :  Why  should  the  city  of  New  York 
be  spoken  of  as  provincial  ? 

We  come  together  here,  drawn  from  every  profession 
and  occupation,  to  greet  a  distinguished  man  from 
across  the  sea ;  and  we  are  so  familiar  with  his  person 
ality,  with  his  achievements,  with  his  manifold  writings, 
that  we  look  upon  him  not  only  as  a  guest,  but  as  an  old 
and  valued  friend.  If  I  know  New  York,  it  is  a  catholic 
and  many-sided  community,  quick  to  appreciate,  warm 
of  sympathy,  and  always  ready  to  help  and  welcome. 
Whether  it  be  a  flood  in  Galveston,  or  an  earthquake 
in  Charleston,  or  a  fire  in  Baltimore,  the  heart  and  the 
head  and  the  purse  of  this  great  community  are  at  the 
service  of  their  fellow-men.  And  whether  it  be  a 
scholar,  a  statesman,  an  explorer,  or  a  man  of  letters 
who  comes  within  our  gates,  he  is  cordially  welcomed 
as  one  whom  we  have  valued,  and  as  one  whom  we  are 
only  too  happy  to  take  to  our  own  hearthstones. 

I  am  inclined  to  think,  however,  that  our  reputation 

183 


184  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

for  provincialism  comes  from  the  fact  that  the  gentle 
men  of  our  newspaper  press  do  not  give  us  oppor 
tunity  enough  to  know  of  some  of  the  important  things 
which  go  on  in  other  parts  of  our  own  land.  I  am 
moved  to  make  this  observation  by  the  fact  that  I  am 
sure  that  very  few  gentlemen  in  this  room  know  that 
not  many  weeks  ago  there  was  delivered  in  the  city  of 
Pittsburg  a  most  unusually  brilliant  and  thoughtful 
oration  upon  the  general  subject  of  ''Progress,"  that 
that  oration  was  delivered  by  our  distinguished  guest 
of  to-night,  and  that  the  delivery  of  it  was  perhaps  the 
chief  purpose  of  his  coming  to  these  shores.  I  pur 
chased  not  only  my  usual  morning  paper,  but  all  of 
the  morning  papers  on  the  following  day,  and  I  was 
unable  to  discover  that  the  citizens  of  New  York  were 
able  to  learn  even  that  such  an  oration  had  been  deliv 
ered,  much  less  to  become  acquainted,  if  only  in  outline 
or  in  summary,  with  the  charm  of  the  style  of  your 
guest,  or  with  the  scope  and  profundity  of  his  thought. 
It  was  an  enviable  privilege,  gentlemen,  to  be  permitted 
to  sit  in  that  great  audience  simply  to  hear  that  oration, 
and  to  learn  from  your  guest's  own  lips  something  of 
his  deepest  and  latest  reflections  upon  the  great  move 
ment  of  which  we  are  all  a  part— social,  political,  and 
intellectual.  It  must  always  be  a  matter  of  keen  regret 
that  the  great,  busy,  energetic  population  of  this  city 
has  not  yet  come  to  know  that  such  an  oration  was 
made,  or  that  certain  significant  tendencies  of  present- 
day  thought  were  pointed  out  and  critically  examined 
by  the  orator. 

But,  gentlemen,  the  thought  that  is  uppermost  in 
every  mind  to-night  is  the  one  that  has  been  touched 


NICHOLAS  MURRAY  BUTLER        185 

upon  so  delightfully  by  your  president,  and  referred  to 
so  generously  by  Mr.  Morley,  that  warm  friendship  and 
community  of  interests  that  bind  together  the  two 
nations  that  we  represent,  and  that  also  bind  us  to 
the  other  cultured  nations  of  the  earth. 

Permit  me,  if  you  please,  in  one  brief  moment  to 
refer  to  what  seems  to  me  to  be  the  chief  significance 
of  that  friendship  and  community  of  interest  at  this 
time,  and  for  the  years  that  are  to  come.  The  one  great 
fundamental  lesson  that  the  people  of  England  and  the 
people  of  the  United  States  have  been  able  to  teach  the 
world,  or  to  exemplify  to  the  world,  over  and  beyond 
the  beauty  of  their  speech  and  the  splendor  of  their 
literature,  the  one  great  fundamental  lesson  is  this, 
the  power  of  liberty  for  progress  and  for  civilization. 

In  common  with  the  English  people  we  have  a  law 
and  a  polity,  and  a  body  of  political  institutions,  that 
are  based  upon  the  recognition  of  liberty ;  and  that  word 
liberty  has  come  to  be  the  most  precious  word  in  all 
our  vocabulary.  From  the  days  of  the  barons  at  Run- 
nymede  to  the  great  convention  of  the  constitution  at 
Philadelphia,  and  on  to  the  surrender  of  the  anti-Union 
forces  at  Appomattox,  the  story  has  been  written  that 
liberty  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  civilization  and 
progress.  The  English  people  and  our  own  have  been 
the  chief  bearers  of  that  noble  tradition. 

See,  if  you  please,  what  the  condition  is  at  this  mo 
ment.  That  fundamental  doctrine  of  liberty  is,  I  will 
not  say  threatened,  because  perhaps  it  is  not  threat 
ened;  but  the  fundamental  doctrine  of  liberty  is  at 
tacked  and  criticized  by  an  increasing  number  of 
human  beings  who  have  been  unable  to  gain  that 


186  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

measure  of  success  which  they  think  is  their  due,  and 
they  are  blaming  upon  the  principle  on  which  our 
whole  society  rests,  the  measure  of  failure  which  has 
been  their  lot.  We  are  again  face  to  face  with  the 
preaching  of  a  doctrine  in  Russia,  in  Germany,  in  Italy, 
in  France,  and  in  lesser  degree  in  England  and  in  the 
United  States,  that  not  liberty,  but  the  surrender  of 
liberty,  and  the  guidance  of  the  social  weal  in  the  inter 
est  of  a  socialistic  democracy,  is  the  path  of  true 
progress. 

Gentlemen,  the  denial  and  restriction  of  liberty  has 
been  tried  in  the  history  of  the  world.  There  have  been 
nations  that  have  exalted  the  supposed  interests  of  the 
mass  over  the  liberty  of  the  individual,  and  they  have 
stood  still  until  they  died.  They  exist  to-day  chiefly  as 
great  traditions  and  forms  of  governmental  and  na 
tional  failure ;  and  whatever  element  of  progress  enters 
into  their  life  to-day,  enters  because  they  are  opening 
their  doors  to  the  doctrine  of  liberty  that  has  made  the 
civilization  of  the  West. 

I  like  to  recall  that  the  gentleman  who  is  your  guest 
to-night  has  been  in  literature  and  in  politics  the  life 
long  apostle  of  the  doctrine  of  liberty.  He  has  sought 
out  and  studied  the  careers  and  characters  and  achieve 
ments  of  those  great  men  of  France  and  England  who 
have  meant  so  much  to  the  cause  of  liberty,  and  to 
whom  liberty  has  meant  the  most;  and  then,  as  the 
crowning  literary  achievement  of  his  life,  he  has  traced 
for  us  in  the  minutest  detail  the  progress  of  the  great 
career  of  Gladstone,  whose  name  is  a  synonym  for  lib 
erty  itself. 

It  is  not  so  many  years  ago  that  Mr.  Gladstone  wrote 


NICHOLAS  MURRAY  BUTLER        187 

his  famous  and  much  read  paper,  entitled  "Kin  beyond 
the  Sea."  Since  that  time  the  sea  has  ceased  to  be  a 
barrier,  and  has  been  made  a  bond.  Never  were  these 
two  peoples  so  close  as  now  in  sympathy,  in  interest, 
and  in  knowledge;  and  never  were  we  so  firm  in  our 
national  self-respect.  We  have  learned  how  to  be 
friends  and  allies  without  jealousy,  without  envy,  and 
without  malice,  because  in  our  saner  and  more  reflective 
moments  we  see  that  we  shall  thus  come  to  be  more  and 
more  the  bearers  of  the  great  tradition  of  liberty. 
There  is  something  more  than  the  material  progress 
which  holds  it  all  up ;  there  is  something  more  than  the 
magnificent  commercial  prosperity  that  we  so  widely 
and  deservedly  seek;  and  that  something  is  this  fun 
damental  idea  of  liberty  which  is  in  our  constitution 
and  in  ourselves,  which  is  the  spirit  of  their  government 
and  of  ours,  which  is  the  basis  of  their  morality  and  of 
ours,  and  which  is  the  inspiration  of  their  best  lives  and 
of  ours. 

Gentlemen,  no  American  who  realizes  what  America 
really  means  can  hesitate  to  welcome  with  warm  affec 
tion  and  with  the  profoundest  respect,  John  Morley, 
the  apostle  and  exponent  of  Anglo-Saxon  liberty. 


HENEY  VAN  DYKE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  JOHN  MOELEY, 
NOVEMBEE  25,  1904 

A  GREAT  English  poet  has  described  the  Lotos  land 
JT\.  as  one  "in  which  it  seemed  always  afternoon." 
Mr.  Morley  now  finds  himself  in  the  Lotos  Clubland, 
wherein  it  seemeth  always  about  eleven  o'clock  in  the 
evening,  and  hearts  are  trumps. 

It  has  been  said  that  we  have  no  titles  of  nobility  in 
this  country.  It  is  true;  but  we  have  the  Lotos  Club 
banquets,  and  the  man  to  whom  a  Lotos  Club  banquet 
is  given  has  the  equivalent  of  a  title  of  nobility;  and 
in  the  case  of  our  guest,  we  are  glad  that  this  title  has 
the  great  advantage  of  not  separating  him  from  the 
House  of  Commons,  where  he  belongs,  and  where  we 
hope  his  voice  will  long  be  heard  on  the  side  of  true 
freedom  and  fair  play. 

It  is  astonishing  to  us  conservative,  sober,  steady- 
going,  somewhat  stolid  Americans  to  see  with  what 
rapidity  and  vivacity  our  young  British  friend  has 
perambulated  this  continent.  Mr.  Morley,  since  he  has 
been  over  here,  has  taken  in  the  whole  show.  He  has 
left  nothing  unseen  that  is  worth  seeing,  and  has  had 
everything  said  to  him  that  is  worth  hearing.  He 
has  tried  the  climate  of  Chicago,  and  measured  the 
winds  of  that  place ;  he  has  bound  the  friends  of  Pitts- 

188 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  189 

burg  to  his  heart  "with  hooks  of  steel";  he  has  lived 
the  "simple  life"  at  Washington  with  trumpets.  He 
has  even  been  at  Boston. 

George  William  Curtis  once  came  back  after  a  short 
absence  from  New  York,  and  he  went  into  his  club. 
Some  one  of  his  many  friends  there  asked,  "Where 
have  you  been,  Mr.  Curtis  ? "  He  replied,  ' '  I  have  been 
in  Boston  to  lecture."  His  friend  rejoined,  "I  am  glad 
of  it;  I  always  did  hate  those  Bostonians." 

But  now  our  honored  guest  has  come  back  from  those 
wide  peregrinations  to  rest  and  repose  in  the  quiet 
Lotos  Club  of  New  York.  He  is  welcome  here ;  we  wish 
that  he  would  stay  with  us  longer ;  and  if  there  is  any 
thing  that  we  know  which  he  does  n't  know,  we  should 
be  glad  to  tell  him. 

I  have  observed,  in  following  his  course — I  may  say 
his  mad  career — through  this  country,  that  he  has  ex 
pressed  a  great  many  valuable  opinions  and  profitable 
truths,  all  of  which  he  has  seen  fit  to  preface  with  an 
apologetic  statement  and  a  request  that  he  should  not 
be  thrown  out,  or  that  nobody  would  sit  on  him,  or  do 
anything  violent  to  him,  or  something  of  that  kind. 
That  is  not  necessary,  let  me  assure  him.  In  this  coun 
try  we  all  have  open  minds,  because  we  usually  "know 
we  are  right. ' ' 

Now,  I  heard  Mr.  Morley  last  Monday,  about  half- 
past  one  in  the  afternoon,  say  that  he  thought  in  this 
country  there  was  a  tendency  (he  apologized  for  say 
ing  it,  but  he  said  it)  —that  in  this  country  he  thought 
there  was  a  tendency  not  only  to  think  one  man  as 
good  as  another,  but  also  to  think  one  man's  opinion  as 
good  as  another  man's  opinion,  and  he  said  that  he 


190  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

thought  (he  ventured  to  think,  you  know,  in  his  mild, 
gentle,  deprecatory  way),  that  the  competence  of  the 
man  who  expressed  the  opinion  seemed  to  qualify  the 
value  of  the  opinion. 

As  he  made  that  profound  and  searching  philosophic 
remark,  I  looked  around,  and  I  saw  alongside  of  Mr. 
Morley,  Mr.  J.  Pierpont  Morgan ;  and  on  the  other  side, 
Mr.  D.  0.  Mills ;  and  just  behind  him,  Mr.  James  Still- 
man;  and  men  of  that  kind  sitting  all  around  him. 
And  I  said,  "Now,  how  true  that  is!"  If  any  half- 
dozen  of  these  men  here  should  express  the  opinion 
that  stocks  were  too  high,  stocks  would  all  go  down 
to-night,  because  they  are  not  only  competent  men,  but 
also  men  who  have  amassed  what  you  might  call  'a 
modest  competence.'  ': 

I  have  observed  that  there  has  been  some  reference 
here  to-night  to  Mr.  Mor ley's  books.  When  I  saw  "The 
Life  of  William  E.  Gladstone"  come  in  served  up  on 
ice,  I  thought  that  the  reference  was  rather  cold.1  We 
might  have  given  a  warmer  reception  to  that  book, 
which  is  undoubtedly  the  best  biographical  work  the 
twentieth  century  has  yet  produced.  The  author  of 
that  book  may  well  say,  parodying  the  words  of  one  who 
said  he  did  n't  care  who  made  the  laws,  provided  he 
might  write  the  songs,  "Let  me  write  the  biographies 
of  the  great  statesmen,  and  I  will  help  make  the  laws 
of  coming  generations. ' ' 

It  is  true,  Mr.  Morley,  that  there  may  be  a  man  in  the 
club  who  has  not  read  all  of  your  books,  strange  as  it 
may  seem;  but  there  is  not  a  single  man  in  this  club, 

1  This  referred  to  the  form  in  which  the  sherbet  was  served  at 
the  dinner. 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  191 

representing  all  professions,  representing  arts  and 
literature,  there  is  not  a  single  man  here  who  does  not 
know  you  by  your  name,  ' '  Honest  John  Morley. ' '  And 
I  will  say  that  it  is  this  knowledge  of  you,  and  your 
character,  and  your  career  which  gives  the  warmth  of 
the  heart  of  the  Lotos  Club  to  our  welcome  to  you  to 
night.  For,  after  all,  what  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  most 
honors  and  most  loves  (I  venture  to  differ  from  my 
friend  the  previous  speaker,  although  he  be  a  presi 
dent),  is  not  liberty,  but  fair  play.  Fair  play  stands 
higher  even  than  liberty;  fair  play,  equity,  honesty, 
that  is  the  great  thing.  That  is  the  thing  that  stands 
above  and  beyond  mere  freedom.  Liberty  is  valuable 
only  because  it  gives  a  chance  for  the  great  expanding 
of  the  human  heart,  in  its  desire  for  fair  play  and 
honesty  and  just  dealing,  to  come  to  the  front  and  assert 
itself. 

"We  welcome  the  guest  of  to-night  because  he  belongs 
to  the  race  of  Pym  and  Hampden;  because  he  inherits 
from  the  men  who  struck  that ' '  deep  note ' '  of  fair  play 
in  freedom,  which,  as  Tennyson  says,  "will  vibrate  to 
the  doom."  "We  welcome  him  because  he  represents 
those  ideas  and  those  ideals  which  have  actuated  prog 
ress  in  this  uncrowned  republic,  and  which  we  hope  to 
see  once  more  actuating  the  progress  of  the  crowned 
republic. 

Now,  we  who  have  ideas  which  we  have  convinced 
ourselves  are  right,  should  each  hold  firmly  believing  in 
them,  and  can  afford  to  wait,  trusting  to  the  results  of 
time.  One  quality  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  I  think,  is 
precious  beyond  compare— not  only  the  love  of  liberty 
and  the  love  of  fair  play,  it  is  the  great  importance  of 


192  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  enormous  patience,  it  is  the  willingness  to  hold  on 
and  wait  for  the  time  to  come.  Through  all  the  coming 
years  there  is  not  a  man  who  will  rejoice  more  in  what 
really  makes  for  prosperity,  for  the  welfare  and  par 
ticularly  the  liberty  of  this  country,  than  our  guest  to 
night—John  Morley. 


CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOHN  MORLEY, 
NOVEMBER  25,  1904 

I  AM  very  glad  that  Mr.  Morley  was  here  at  the  time 
of  the  American  Thanksgiving.  It  is  an  English 
festival.  It  was  brought  over  to  us  by  Anglo-Saxon 
descent  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  The  early  set 
tler  of  New  England  had  n't  much  to  be  thankful  for, 
except  that  he  was  alive;  but  he  returned  thanks  for 
that. 

There  are  sections  of  New  England,  in  New  Hamp 
shire  and  in  Vermont,  where  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  has 
not  been  affected  by  the  American,  and  where  they  have 
the  vernacular  of  the  period  when  their  ancestors  came, 
and  their  customs;  and  I  wish  Mr.  Morley  could  have 
celebrated  Thanksgiving  among  them.  There  he  would 
have  seen  dyspeptic-looking  Yankees,  who  go  out  to  new 
territories  and  build  up  States;  and  where  they  build 
up  States  and  cities,  no  matter  how  many  there  be,  they 
still  bear  the  stamp  of  their  ideals  and  carry  with  them 
always  the  school-house,  the  university,  and  the  church. 
And  he  would  have  discovered  the  source  of  their  power 
in  their  methods  of  returning  thanks ;  for  that  dyspeptic 
man  and  intellectually  dyspeptic-looking  woman,  his 
wife,  devour  quantities  of  American  turkey,  and 

193 


194  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

sausage,  and  eleven  or  twelve  kinds  of  pie,  and  call  for 
more. 

In  tracing  the  American  Thanksgiving  from  those 
true  descendants  of  those  who  fought  at  Naseby  and 
Marston  Moor,  we  know  why  it  was  that  those  follow 
ers  of  Cromwell  so  easily  beat  the  followers  of  Prince 
Rupert  and  brought  about  the  Revolution  of  which  we 
are  the  inheritors  and  enjoyers.  I  think  Brother  Mor- 
ley  himself  has  something  of  the  Puritan  strain,  cer 
tainly  inherited. 

In  this  country  recently  fourteen  millions  of  Ameri 
can  people,  by  the  astounding  majority  of  two  millions, 
had  instructed  us  to  stand  up  for  protection;  and  yet 
Mr.  Morley,  here,  among  the  high  priests  of  protection, 
tells  them  that  if  they  like  hell,  they  had  better  remain 
in  it. 

I  have  on  one  side  of  me  my  Calvinistic  friend  the 
doctor  from  the  Princeton  University,  and  on  the  other 
side  my  friend  Professor  Adler,  who  does  not  believe 
that  there  is  any  such  place  at  all.  And  yet,  if  protec 
tion  is  hell,  it  is  a  mighty  prosperous  and  progressive 
and  happy  hell. 

Now,  we  have  been  almost  surfeited  in  the  past  with 
the  visits  of  our  English  brothers.  They  came  here 
originally  about  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years 
ago;  and  some  of  them  returned  home.  Then  later 
as  lecturers,  who  wasted  our  time  and  money.  Then 
came  representatives  of  the  smart  set  of  London, 
sometimes  titled,  and  generally  entitled  to  nothing. 
Then  came  the  English  tourist,  to  write  a  book  about 
us  and  our  civilization,  who  saw  us  from  the  win 
dows  of  the  car  in  which  he  rode,  and  made  notes  as 


CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW  195 

he  passed  through  our  villages  and  cities— that  part  of 
our  villages  and  cities  through  which  railroads  pass; 
and  then,  having  been  told  that  the  one  critical  and 
political  question  with  which  we  were  struggling,  and 
what  difficulty  we  were  finding  in  its  solution,  was  the 
negro  question,  he  got  his  views  on  that  subject  from 
the  porter  in  the  Pullman  car,  and  when  he  got  home 
he  would  write  his  book,  which  would  receive  criticisms 
in  the  press  of  England,  and  not  be  received  with  favor 
by  the  American  people. 

Now  I  am  glad,  however,  that  a  new  element  is  com 
ing  to  America.  The  John  Morleys  and  Bryces  are 
coming  over  to  see  us;  men  who  represent  in  English 
public  life  what  the  best  men  here  are  in  our  public 
life,  men  who  stand  for  the  considerations  in  their  own 
country  that  the  best  of  our  American  thought  stands 
for,  come  here  to  be  part  of  that  great  constituency  of 
which  we  are  all  one  upon  that  platform. 

I  remember  a  dinner  in  London  at  Mr.  Lowell 's,  when 
he  was  minister,  when  the  complaint  was  made  by  a  man 
of  letters  that  the  English  language  was  being  adul 
terated  by  American  slang.  And  Mr.  Lowell  himself,  in 
his  "Biglow  Papers,"  had  been  open  to  some  extent  to 
the  criticism  which  this  English  man  of  letters  gave, 
and  Mr.  Lowell  went  to  his  library  and  brought  out  a 
book  from  which  he  proved  that  American  slang  was 
the  vernacular  of  the  Pilgrim  when  he  sailed  from 
Plymouth,  and  the  language  of  the  English  people  at 
that  period.  We  are  preserving  the  classical  English 
language  in  our  American  slang. 

Now,  my  friends,  I  endorse  most  heartily  the  senti 
ment,  the  cordial  sentiment,  which  has  been  expressed 


196  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

here  to-night  by  Mr.  Morley  for  the  peace  of  the  world. 
Nine  tenths  of  our  people  are  of  this  composite  race. 
We  are  Anglo-Saxons,  Germans,  Frenchmen,  Danes, 
Scandinavians;  in  my  own  veins  runs  the  blood  of 
almost  every  nation  in  the  world;  my  ancestors  came 
over  here  two  hundred  years  ago;  we  stand  for  the 
peace  of  the  world,  and  that  can  best  be  preserved  by 
the  men  of  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain,  by 
the  statesmen  of  the  Morley  type  and  the  statesmen  of 
the  Roosevelt  type  and  the  statesmen  of  the  best  type 
of  both  sides  standing  for  the  ideals  common  with 
both  people.  With  all  these  English-speaking  races 
standing  for  peace,  for  civilization,  for  the  uplifting 
of  the  dependent  peoples  and  bringing  them  to  higher 
planes  and  representative  government,  the  peace  of 
the  world  is  secure,  and  the  future  of  the  world  is 
what  Morley  would  have  it,  and  what  Morley  would 
have  it  is  what  every  statesman,  every  philanthropist 
in  this  world  prays  may  come  about. 


LYMAN  ABBOTT 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOHN  MOKLEY, 
NOVEMBER  25,  1904 

I  COULD  hardly  think  of  consenting  to  take  your 
time  at  so  late  an  hour  of  the  evening  as  this,  were 
it  not  that  I  wish  particularly  to  bear  my  testimony 
and  to  express  for  myself,  and  I  think  I  may  say  for 
others,  the  sense  of  appreciation  for  a  certain  phase  of 
Mr.  Morley's  work  to  which  little  allusion  has  been 
made  here  to-night. 

He  has  been  a  leader  of  the  nation  as  a  statesman, 
and  of  that  much  has  been  said.  He  has  set  an  example 
as  an  interpreter  of  men  through  his  writings,  of  which 
little  has  been  said.  We  have  just  passed  through  a 
political  campaign  which  has  illustrated  the  truth  that 
it  is  exceedingly  difficult  for  one  man  to  understand  or 
thoroughly  interpret  the  fortune  of  another.  I  think 
there  are  few  of  us  who  did  not  see  in  the  newspapers 
the  contrasted  portraits  of  the  real  and  the  legendary 
Roosevelt.  I  am  sure  that  those  of  us  who  know  him 
believe  that  the  legendary  was  the  real  and  the  real  was 
the  legendary.  I  am  sure  that  there  are  few  Repub 
licans—no  Republicans — who  would  be  willing  to  take 
their  opponents'  interpretation  of  their  candidate,  and 
no  Democrats  who  would  be  willing  to  do  the  same 
thing.  What  is  true  in  politics  is  true  in  religion. 

197 


198  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Roman  Catholics  don't  understand  Protestants,   and 
vice  versa. 

They  are  not  able  to  see  with  each  other's  eyes,  or  to 
get  each  other's  point  of  view.  Professor  Herrick  was 
traveling  in  Italy,  and  an  Italian  professor  was  sitting 
at  his  side  and  began,  in  the  course  of  conversation,  to 
attack  the  Pope.  The  professor  defended  the  Pope. 
Presently  he  said  to  the  Italian, ' l  It  is  strange  that  you, 
an  Italian,  should  attack  the  Pope,  and  I,  a  Protestant, 
should  defend  him."  The  Italian  replied,  "You  a 
Protestant !  I  also  am  an  atheist. ' ' 

Now,  gentlemen,  for  one  man  to  interpret  another 
man  requires  three  distinct  things :  He  must  be  a  lover 
of  truth,  above  all  other  things.  When  Truth  sends  in 
her  visiting-card  we  are  glad  to  receive  her,  and  we  are 
ready  to  pay  her  out  of  our  receipts.  It  requires,  in 
the  second  place,  respect  for  men ;  not  merely  good  will 
for  them,  but  respect  for  them,  whether  they  think  as 
we  think,  and  live  as  we  live,  or  if,  on  the  other  hand, 
they  are  absolutely  uncongenial  in  temperament  and 
absolutely  opposed  in  opinion.  And  it  requires,  in  the 
third  place,  imagination,  which  enables  one  to  stand  in 
the  place  of  another,  to  put  himself  in  his  mind  in  the 
other  man's  place,  and  to  see  through  that  other  man's 
eyes.  I  don't  know  of  any  man  in  our  time  who  has 
possessed  these  three  qualities  as  fully  as  John  Morley. 
He  has  been  actuated  by  a  supreme  love  for  truth;  he 
has  been  able  to  see  through  the  other  man's  eyes,  and 
he  has  respected  the  men  whom  he  has  criticized  and  to 
whom  he  has  been  opposed.  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  high- 
churchman,  so  high  a  churchman  that  he  was  prac 
tically  a  form  of  Roman  Catholic  in  disguise.  I  may 


LYMAN  ABBOTT  199 

venture  to  say  that  Mr.  Morley  never  was  a  churchman ; 
and  yet,  non-churchman  as  he  was,  he  was  the  man  who 
was  desired  by  Mr.  Gladstone's  friends  to  write  the 
biography  of  Mr.  Gladstone.  Nowhere  in  England  will 
you  find  a  better  expression  of  Gladstone's  religious 
views  or  a  better  understanding  of  them. 

Oliver  Cromwell  was  a  mystic,  and  an  important 
part  of  his  force  lay  in  the  belief  that  he  was  in  con 
stant  communication  with  the  supernatural  powers. 
John  Morley  is  a  rationalist,  certainly  not  a  mystic,  and 
yet  no  one  in  England  could  have  written  so  clear  and 
so  fair  a  description  as  is  in  the  biography  that  John 
Morley  has  written  of  the  statesman  who  was  a  mystic. 

Personally,  in  our  religious  views  we  are  far  apart. 
John  Morley  I  think  I  may  call  a  rationalist.  I  don't 
hesitate  to  call  myself  a  mystic.  He  declares  he  does 
not  believe  in  the  supernatural  powers.  I  believe  that 
we  live  encouraged  and  surrounded  by  them,  live  and 
breathe  and  move  and  have  our  being  in  them.  But  if 
I  could  conceive  it  possible  that  the  publishers  of  my 
poor  writings  would  ask  me  what  man  in  England,  not 
a  personal  friend,  I  should  choose  to  interpret  my  re 
ligious  views  to  the  world,  I  would  say,  without  any 
hesitation,  give  me  John  Morley,  because  in  his  criticism 
he  would  find  every  weak  point  in  my  arguments 
and  disclose  it  mercilessly,  but  present  me  with  ab 
solute  fidelity  and  truthfulness,  which  is  all  that  any 
man  has  the  right  to  ask. 

I  thank  Mr.  Morley  for  the  pace  he  has  set,  for  the 
example  that  has  given  inspiration,  in  the  name  of  men 
of  letters,  editors,  and  journalists,  in  the  name  of 
authors  and  in  the  name  of  preachers.  I  thank  him 


200  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

for  what  he  has  done  to  teach  us  that  the  love  of  truth 
must  be  preeminent  above  all,  because  that  is  absolutely 
essential  to  any  true  and  honorable  love  for  men,  and 
that  if  we  would  understand  our  fellow-men  we  must 
enter  into  and  see  life  as  they  see  it,  and  interpret  them 
as  they  would  be  interpreted.  I  trust  that  we  shall  all 
learn  this  lesson  from  John  Morley,  and  carry  it  with 
us  wherever  we  go. 


FELIX  ABLER 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOHN  MOBLEY, 
NOVEMBEE  25,  1904 

FTHHE  lotos  flower,  worked  out  in  bronze  or  other 
JL  material,  is  sometimes  used  as  a  console  to  support 
the  figures  of  legendary  or  historical  heroes.  Your 
Lotos  Club,  in  like  manner,  has  been  a  console  or  pedes 
tal  on  which  not  a  few  eminent  figures  have  stood  out 
before  the  public,  and  never  has  it  served  this  purpose 
more  fitly  than  this  evening. 

In  the  few  words  I  shall  say,  I  wish  to  emphasize 
especially  that  ethical  quality  in  Mr.  Morley  which  dis 
tinguishes  him  as  an  author,  as  a  statesman,  and  as  a 
representative  of  English  character  in  its  most  admir 
able  aspect.  If  it  be  true  that  the  best  style  is  that 
which  touches  the  living  qualities  of  the  reader's  mind, 
and  induces  in  him,  by  way  of  response  to  the  author's 
challenge,  the  spontaneous  employment  of  his  own 
faculties,  then  we  may  go  far  before  we  shall  find  a  style 
more  completely  measuring  up  to  this  standard  than 
that  of  Mr.  Morley.  We  read  and  reread,  with  still 
increasing  appreciation,  his  profound  psychological 
analyses,  his  crisp  presentation  of  the  results  of  compre 
hensive  scholarship,  his  close-linked  reasoning,  and  we 
are  no  less  benefited  by  the  intellectual  honesty  which 
marks  the  handling  of  the  subject-matter  than  by  the 

201 


202  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

nicety  with  which  the  processes  of  thought  are  mirrored 
in  the  phrases  and  in  their  sequences.  There  is  no  finer 
quality  than  honesty.  Common  honesty  becomes  a 
noble  thing  when  translated  into  the  high  regions  of 
intellectual  effort  and  achievement.  And  in  all  the 
literature  of  the  English-speaking  peoples  at  the  pres 
ent  day,  it  seems  to  me,  there  is  no  more  conspicuous 
illustration  of  this  virtue  of  mental  honesty  than  is  to 
be  found  on  every  page  of  Mr.  Morley  's  writings. 

Of  the  ethical  quality  of  Mr.  Morley 's  statesmanship 
it  would  be  superfluous  to  speak.  The  principles  which 
have  determined  his  course  in  public  life,  the  policies 
with  which  his  name  is  associated,  reveal  transparently 
the  ethical  purpose  underlying  them.  I  cannot  for 
bear,  however,  in  passing,  to  reflect  with  something  like 
envy  on  the  comparative  facility  with  which  men  of  Mr. 
Morley 's  type  come  to  the  top  in  England,  especially  in 
view  of  the  difficulties  that  would  hinder  their  rise  in 
this  country.  One  of  the  greatest,  if  not  the  greatest 
practical  problem  of  politics  is  to  arrange  matters  in 
such  a  way  that  the  best  men  shall  be  in  charge  of  the 
government,  and  in  this  respect  our  American  democ 
racy  has  not  met  with  the  success  we  desire  for  it.  It  is 
true  that  we  have  had,  among  our  statesmen,  some  of 
the  most  illustrious  personages  that  have  ever  appeared 
in  human  history ;  and  on  great  occasions  in  the  life  of 
the  nation,  thus  far,  there  have  always  come  to  the  fore 
great  leaders  competent  to  meet  the  emergency  of  the 
hour.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  average  politicians 
of  the  United  States  are  very  far  from  measuring  up  to 
an  elevated  standard  of  ability  and  character.  One 
is  tempted  to  say  that  in  the  United  States  the  few 


FELIX  ABLER  203 

great  political  figures  exceed  in  stature,  especially  in 
moral  stature,  the  great  men  of  other  countries,  while 
the  average  politician  falls  below  the  average  type  of 
such  countries  as  England  and  Germany. 

But  what  I  have  more  particularly  in  mind  to  say  is 
that  England  seems  to  compare  favorably  with  the 
United  States  in  the  far  greater  degree  of  independence 
accorded  to  her  public  men,  and  the  far  less  rigid  con- 
formance  to  popular  opinions  and  beliefs  that  seems  to 
be  exacted  of  them.  Certain  of  Mr.  Morley 's  opinions 
may  perhaps  be  characterized  in  a  somewhat  crude 
fashion  as  "  radical ";  at  any  rate,  his  religious  and 
philosophical  creed  is  probably  divergent  in  important 
respects  from  that  of  the  great  body  of  the  British 
electorate.  But  this  difference  did  not  stand  in  the 
way  of  his  political  advancement,  and  that  this  should 
have  been  so  is  gratifying  evidence  of  the  extent  to 
which  personal  independence  is  honored,  or  perhaps 
taken  for  granted,  among  English  statesmen  and  by  the 
English  people.  I  doubt  whether  in  the  United  States 
a  man  of  such  pronounced  opinions  as  Mr.  Morley  's,  no 
matter  what  his  merits  might  be  in  other  respects, 
would  be  eligible  for  the  highest  political  offices. 

A  third  point  is  the  fine  significance  and  interest 
which  Mr.  Morley 's  career  and  personality  possess  for 
us,  as  representing  the  best  type  of  Englishman.  It 
may  be  asked  whether  a  noble  example  of  English  char 
acter  has  or  should  have  for  us  a  greater  significance 
than  an  attractive  type  of  any  other  nationality.  We 
are  reputed  to  be,  and  I  think  justly,  a  hospitable  peo 
ple.  The  Lotos  Club,  for  instance,  has  entertained  emi 
nent  men  of  every  race,  coming  from  every  quarter  of 


204  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  earth.  Moreover,  we  are  a  cosmopolitan  people,  a 
"melting-pot  of  the  nations,"  as  has  been  said.  Now, 
there  are  two  tendencies  to  be  observed  at  present  in  the 
utterances  of  our  public  men.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
heterogeneous  derivation  of  our  population  is  em 
phasized.  All  Europe,  and  not  England  alone,  it  is 
said,  is  the  mother-country  of  America.  A  new  nation 
has  taken  shape  on  this  continent,  and  to  its  develop 
ment  the  entire  Occident,  if  not  also  the  Orient,  is  in 
vited  to  make  its  contribution.  On  the  other  hand, 
England  is  spoken  of,  in  a  somewhat  exclusive  fashion, 
as  the  mother-country.  The  plea  for  friendliness  be 
tween  ourselves  and  our  "cousins"  across  the  water  is 
based  on  the  fact  that  "blood  is  thicker  than  water." 
And  the  American  people  generally,  without  distinction, 
are  sometimes  characterized  as  Anglo-Saxons.  That  is 
to  say,  those  who  are  not  Anglo-Saxons  are  in  a  way 
passed  over  as  if  they  did  not  count,  or  are  relegated  to 
a  somewhat  inferior  place  as  if  they  were  but  sub- 
Americans. 

Being  an  American  not  of  Anglo-Saxon  descent,  I 
may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  say  that  the  two  ten 
dencies  are  not  irreconcilable,  but  should  each  receive 
the  consideration  due  to  it.  We  should  realize  that 
America  is  not  a  new  England,  but  just  America ;  that 
a  new  kind  of  civilization  is  being  slowly  built  up  in 
this  country;  and  that,  from  whatever  land  the  immi 
grant  may  come,  he  is  challenged  and  in  duty  bound  to 
dedicate  the  best  that  is  in  him  to  the  service  of  his 
adopted  country,  and  to  sift  out  the  best  in  his  inheri 
tance  in  order  to  incorporate  it  in  our  new  American 
civilization. 


FELIX  ADLER  205 

And  yet,  speaking  for  those  who  are  not  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  descent,  if  I  may,  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say  that  in 
coming  to  this  country  we  should  all  suffer,  as  it  were, 
a  kind  of  "sea-change,"  by  which  I  mean  that  we  are 
bound  to  recognize,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  hegemony 
of  the  English  mind  as  embodied  in  English  speech,  in 
the  English  conception  of  liberty,  and  especially  in  the 
basic  English  political  tradition.  We  may  modify,  we 
may  revise,  we  may  expand,  we  may  augment  what  in 
substance  we  accept ;  nevertheless,  the  American  people 
are,  and  will  be,  if  not  an  English  people,  yet  an  Eng 
lish-speaking  people,  and  to  no  slight  degree  an  English- 
thinking  people,  and  the  full  consequences  implied  in 
this  concession  we  may  not  shirk. 

And  therefore,  I  take  it,  a  statesman  and  writer  of 
Mr.  Morley's  rank  does  have  a  special  significance  and 
an  intimate  interest  for  us  exceeding  that  of  eminent 
personalities  representing  the  types  of  culture  produced 
by  France  or  Germany,  however  greatly,  in  other  re 
spects,  we  may  appreciate  and  assimilate  what  those 
other  personalities  and  types  of  culture  have  to  give  us. 

But  there  is  one  more  proviso  which  I  have  to  add. 
If  we  accord  a  unique  importance  to  the  English  tradi 
tion  and  the  English  spirit  as  an  element  in  American 
civilization,  if  we  admit  a  peculiar  relation  of  intimacy 
to  England  as  compared  with  other  countries,  it  is  to 
England  on  its  best  side  that  we  mentally  ally  our 
selves;  it  is  the  noble  fruit  of  English  history  that  we 
would  adopt  and,  in  our  own  independent  way,  per 
petuate.  For  every  people,  like  every  individual,  to  use 
the  allegory  of  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's,  has  its  Jekyll 
side  and  its  Hyde  side.  Every  people  is  Janus-faced, 


206  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

has  its  noble  features  and  its  ignoble  features.  And  it 
is  to  the  noble  features  of  English  life  and  English 
character  that  we  would  relate,  within  the  limits  in 
dicated,  our  own  life;  it  is  to  John  Bull,  so  far  as  he 
wears  the  form  and  features  of  John  Morley,  that  we 
would  pay  our  homage  and  extend  our  welcome. 


HENEY  VAN  DYKE 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  DECEMBER  23,  1904 

FT1HESE  are  the  most  embarrassing  circumstances 
I  under  which  I  have  ever  spoken.  Many  a  time  you 
have  given  me  the  pleasure  of  sitting  down  to  one  of 
your  good  dinners  and  of  making  remarks  about  your 
guest  of  honor.  Certainly  it  never  entered  my  head 
that  you  would  ask  me  to  sit  down  at  the  right  hand  of 
the  president  and  have  my  portrait  "painted  by  Law 
rence.  ' ' 

There  is  really  only  one  explanation  of  the  present 
situation.  In  the  days  of  Homer  and  Herodotus,  when 
men  ate  the  lotos  they  forgot  their  friends,  but  now  the 
effect  of  the  Lotos  is  to  make  men  remember  their 
friends,  and  it  is  to  friendship,  and  to  friendship  only, 
that  I  owe  the  honor  of  this  evening.  And  an  honor 
that  comes  in  that  way  ought  not  to  make  a  man  feel 
that  he  needs  a  larger  hat,  but  only  that  he  would  like  to 
do  his  work  a  little  better  in  order  that  he  might  not 
disappoint  his  friends.  And  after  all,  gentlemen,  about 
the  best  wages  we  get  for  our  work  in  this  world  is  paid 
in  the  coin  of  friendship.  Take  the  preacher.  How  are 
you  going  to  measure  his  success  ?  Certainly  not  by  the 
number  of  heretics  that  he  has  smoked  out,  but  by  the 
number  of  people  that  he  has  had  the  good  luck  to  help 
in  some  way  amid  the  conflicts  and  perplexities  of  this 

207 


208  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

mortal  life— people  who  feel  that  he  is  honest  enough 
to  listen  to,  and  that  he  is  human  enough  to  tell  the 
truth  to,  and  that,  somehow  or  other,  they  can  call  him 
a  friend  in  the  spirit.  Now,  the  preacher  can  never  get 
into  that  relation  with  real  men  and  women  if  he  fol 
lows  the  course  described  by  the  old  Scotchman  in  giv 
ing  an  account  of  his  new  minister.  "The  new 
minister,"  he  says.  "Ah,  six  days  of  the  week  he  is 
invisible,  and  the  seventh  he  is  incomprehensible. ' '  He 
has  got  to  come  close  to  his  fellow-man,  somehow  or 
other ;  and  if  he  is  ever  tempted  in  the  pride  of  intellect 
to  elimb  up  into  a  theological  sycamore  tree  to  survey 
the  crowd,  he  is  likely  to  hear  a  voice  saying  to  him, 
*  *  Zaccheus,  come  down. ' '  And  above  all,  I  think  he  has 
got  to  make  men  feel,  somehow  or  other,  that  he  is  in  the 
same  fight  that  they  are  in  with  various  kinds  of  evil, 
a  fight  which  is  sometimes  far  from  easy  to  carry  on 
and  to  stick  to. 

' '  Tommy, ' '  said  a  friend  of  mine  to  his  little  boy  not 
long  ago—' '  Tommy,  yon  have  been  bad ;  now  you  really 
must  be  good. ' ' 

"Yes,  father,"  said  the  boy;  "but  it  is  not  so  easy  to 
be  good ;  I  wish  you  would  just  try  it  yourself  once." 

The  minister  who  is  a  man  has  got  to  take  the  view  of 
life  so  lucidly  expressed  by  Thomas.  And  if  he  does  it 
he  is  very  apt  to  find  his  best  reward,  the  best  salary  he 
gets,  in  the  friendship  of  men  with  whom  he  has  really 
touched  shoulders  in  the  conflict  with  evils  which  beset 
us  all.  Then  take  a  man  who  is  a  teacher  in  one  of 
those  institutions  where  they  now  teach  the  young  idea 
how  to  shoot.  You  have  heard  a  great  deal  lately  about 
the  small  pay  of  the  professors— smaller  even  than  that 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  209 

of  a  reasonably  accomplished  and  non-poisonous  cook. 
Well,  now,  it  is  true— it  is  painfully  true  that  the  pro 
fessors'  pay  is  small  in  money,  but  you  must  not  forget 
that  the  profession  of  teaching,  while  it  is  one  of  the 
worst  paid,  is  one  of  the  best  rewarded  in  the  world, 
though  not  in  academic  honors  and  dignities. 

Then  take  literature;  take  the  profession— if  it  be  a 
profession— of  a  writer  or  author.  What  is  the  best 
pay  that  a  man  gets  in  that  profession?  It  is  not  the 
money,  although  I  am  very  glad  to  say  that  writers  get 
more  money  to-day  than  they  used  to  in  the  old  times. 
I  am  grateful— I  am  surprised,  but  I  am  grateful  when 
I  find  there  are  a  lot  of  people  foolish  enough  to  buy 
one  of  my  books.  The  pay  of  authors  is  better  than  it 
has  been  in  previous  centuries.  Why,  some  authors 
can  even  afford  to  go  into  the  legislature.  Just  think  of 
it !  But  the  real  reward,  the  thing  that  they  care  for 
most  of  all,  does  not  come  in  that  shape.  It  comes  in 
the  shape  of  friendship,  to  enter  into  many  homes,  to 
come  as  a  welcome  guest  by  the  winter  fireside,  and  to 
be  a  friendly  companion  in  the  summer  walks,  to  cheer 
the  hour  of  loneliness,  to  soothe  the  hour  of  pain,  to 
uplift  and  strengthen  and  encourage  the  despondent, 
to  give  a  ray  of  pure  and  clean  feeling  to  men  whose 
hearts  are  heavy  and  tired,  to  speak  the  word  that  shall 
linger  kindly  and  pleasantly  in  the  memory  of  every 
human  being.  That  is  what  is  worth  while  in  author 
ship.  Now,  I  am  going  to  be  honest  enough  to  confess, 
too,  that  men  who  write  wish  for  fame.  Fame  they 
wish  for  and  hope  for.  They  cannot  tell  anything  about 
it,  but  down  in  the  bottom  of  their  hearts  is  the  secret 
wish  and  hope  that  what  they  have  written  may  pos- 


210  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

sibly  live  after  they  are  gone.  But  the  best  kind  of 
fame  is  only  another  form  of  friendship.  What  is  the 
fame  of  the  book  which  all  men  talk  about  but  nobody 
reads,  like  ' '  Paradise  Lost, ' '  compared  with  the  fame  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  and  Burns 's  poems  and  Lamb's 
essays  or  Thackeray's  novels,  which  are  still  in  living 
companionship,  beloved  by  men  and  women  who  are 
grateful  for  the  companionship  which  they  get  out  of 
this  kind  of  literature?  That  is  fame— to  have  a  post 
humous  friendship  with  living  men  and  women  in  the 
world.  That  is  fame. 

I  am  going  to  tell  you  about  two  convictions  of  mine 
in  regard  to  two  conditions  which  I  think  are  valid  and 
important,  or  whatever  you  choose  to  call  it,  to  the  man 
trying  to  write  the  kind  of  literature  that  will  really 
win  for  him  the  reward  of  friendship  now,  and  possibly 
a  posthumous  friendship,  which  is  the  best  kind  of 
fame.  The  first  is  this :  the  man  who  wants  to  get  that 
kind  of  reward  for  writing  has  got  to  live  his  life  in 
touch  with  his  fellow-men.  It  is  not  necessary,  in  order 
to  be  an  author,  to  wear  your  hair  half-way  down  your 
back  and  live  in  a  cage.  It  is  not  necessary,  in  order  to 
be  an  author,  to  even  shut  yourself  up  in  any  literary 
circle  or  coterie.  For  my  part,  personally,  I  am  frank 
enough  to  confess  that  I  could  not  get  into  a  literary 
coterie  if  I  tried. 

I  do  not  believe  it  is  necessary  for  a  man  to  exclude 
himself  from  the  active  school  of  life  in  order  to  enable 
himself  to  perform  literary  labors.  I  do  not  believe  that 
the  finest  poetry  or  prose  has  ever  been  written  by  men 
who  had  nothing  else  to  do  but  to  write.  I  remember 
hearing  John  Morley  say  at  this  table  that  he  thought  it 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  211 

was  a  good  thing  for  the  men  who  were  writing  to  have 
a  share  in  the  active  work  of  life;  and  I  think  so  too. 
And  as  I  look  back  over  the  history  of  literature  I  am 
astonished  to  see  how  many  of  them  did  it.  Chaucer 
was  a  most  active  kind  of  politician.  All  we  know  about 
his  life  is  the  different  offices  that  he  held.  Shakespeare 
was  a  theatrical  stage  manager;  and  if  there  is  any 
more  active  life  than  that,  I  do  not  know  it.  Milton 
was  a  school-teacher  and  a  secretary  of  state;  Walter 
Scott  was  a  lawyer  and  a  sheriff;  Wordsworth  was  a 
stamp  distributor,  and  Matthew  Arnold  was  a  school 
inspector;  Charles  Kingsley  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emer 
son  were  preachers  and  lecturers;  Lowell  and  Long 
fellow  were  professors ;  and,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  the  bulk 
of  the  literature  that  we  have  that  has  survived  has 
been  produced  by  men  who  have  done  something  else 
besides  write,  and  they  have  been  in  touch  with  active 
life.  If  you  are  going  to  know  about  anything  you 
write  about,  and  if  you  are  going  to  know  anything 
about  life,  you  have  got  to  be  in  it ;  and  I  do  not  know 
any  better  way  to  be  in  life  than  to  have  some  kind  of 
work  to  do  in  the  world.  Therefore  I  believe  that  it  is 
perfectly  wise  and  altogether  advisable  for  the  men 
who  have  got  to  write  to  have  a  hold  on  their  fellow-men 
in  the  world  in  the  way  of  active  work. 

The  second  conviction— and  this  I  advance  with 
some  modesty  because  it  is  quite  frequently  disputed— 
is,  that  the  man  who  wishes  to  write  books  which  the 
world  will  take  into  friendship,  must  put  into  them  his 
best,  not  his  worst  thoughts  and  feelings;  and  when  I 
say  his  best  work  and  not  his  worst,  I  mean  that  he 
must  distinguish  between  good  and  bad,  right  and  wrong. 


212  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Now,  gentlemen,  let  me  make  myself  perfectly  clear. 
Speaking  now  as  a  man  of  letters,  I  say  that  the  ethical 
principle  of  life  is  the  best  principle  of  life,  and  that 
the  ability  to  distinguish  between  right  and  wrong  is 
the  most  interesting  and  most  noble  in  life;  and  I  say 
that  the  man  who  emasculates  himself  so  that  he  pro 
fesses  not  to  know  the  difference  between  right  and 
wrong,  incapacitates  himself  for  dealing  with  the  prin 
cipal  interests  of  human  life.  I  am  not  going  so  far  as 
to  say  what  Aristophanes,  the  great  Greek  comedian, 
said.  He  said  distinctly : 

The  bard  is  the  master  for  manhood  and  youth; 
He  is  bound  to  instruct  them  in  virtue  and  truth. 

I  would  not  say  that.  I  would  modify  it  by  the  later 
view  of  Aristotle  and  Plato— that  he  is  not  bound  to 
instruct,  but  he  is  bound  to  inspire.  Instruction  is  a 
different  thing  from  inspiration.  There  is  no  use  what 
ever  in  trying  to  attain  the  artistic  spirit  of  the  Greeks 
by  cultivating  eccentricities  tinged  with  vice;  yet  that 
is  what  some  people  think  is  the  proper  thing. 

The  artistic  spirit  of  the  Greek  is  this :  Art  exists  for 
the  sake  of  pleasure,  but  there  are  differences  and  de 
grees  in  pleasure  as  there  are  in  everything  else  in  the 
world.  Noble  art  lives  for  better  things,  but  that  which 
is  not  noble  in  pleasure  enervates  and  degrades  and 
weakens.  What  a  splendid  history  we  have  in  our  brief 
history  of  American  literature  in  this  respect!  Look 
at  the  roll  of  men  that  has  been  called  the  roll  of  Ameri 
can  men  of  letters— Irving,  Hawthorne,  Emerson, 
Lowell,  Bryant,  Longfellow,  and  Charles  Dudley  War 
ner,  who  sat  here  at  your  board,  the  last  of  these  men  to 


HENRY  VAN  DYKE  213 

go,  the  fine,  clean,  honest,  true  men— men  whose  hands 
it  would  be  an  honor  to  take,  men  whom  you  can  trust. 
Now,  is  Americanism  to  mean  nothing  but  cutting  loose 
from  these  men  and  from  the  traditions  of  their  litera 
ture  ?  Is  it  to  mean  something  not  only  new,  but  some 
thing  different  ?  I  hope  not.  I  hope  that  the  tradition 
of  American  literature  is  going  to  keep  in  the  spirit  of 
those  men.  For  my  own  part,  I  have  written  but  little, 
and  it  is  not  half  as  good  as  it  ought  to  be ;  but  I  should 
wish  to  see  every  page  that  I  have  ever  written  blotted 
out  and  burned  rather  than  that  one  man  should  turn 
from  what  I  have  written  with  a  mind  degraded  or 
defiled  or  weakened,  disheartened  and  discouraged ;  and 
I  should  be  most  grateful  if  from  any  page  or  any  verse 
that  I  have  penned  a  man  should  draw  something  that 
would  make  it  easier  for  him  to  meet  life's  vicissitudes 
and  to  do  his  duty  and  to  love  his  fellow-man,  to  rejoice 
in  the  world  in  which  he  lives  and  in  the  life  which  has 
been  given  to  him.  Two  things  have  come  to  me  that  I 
am  proud  of:  one,  that  my  father  for  forty  years  took 
me  into  his  closest  intimacy  and  taught  me  the  best  that 
I  have  ever  known;  and  the  second,  that  through  the 
work  that  I  have  done,  poorly  enough,  here  in  this  town 
for  twenty  years,  I  have  won  so  many  good  and  kind 
friends. 


MINOT  J.  SAVAGE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  HENRY  VAN  DYKE, 
DECEMBER  23,  1904 

I  AM  very  happy  to  be  here  to-night  to  do  honor  to 
Dr.  Van  Dyke.  He  has  distinguished  himself  in  so 
many  different  ways  that  I  really  do  not  know  where  to 
begin  the  enumeration.  In  the  first  place,  and  the  one 
thing  which  I  consider  chief  of  all,  is  the  fact  that  he 
has  distinguished  himself  as  a  man.  There  are  no  ladies 
present,  so  I  have  not  to  consider  them;  and  in  their 
absence  I  will  say  that  I  think  the  grandest  thing  in  all 
the  world  is  a  grand,  true,  noble  man.  It  is  only  men 
we  need  to  make  the  world  ideal. 

Dr.  Van  Dyke  has  distinguished  himself  as  a  min 
ister,  and  if  you  will  pardon  me  I  should  like  to  trespass 
on  your  patience  long  enough  to  say  one  word  about 
the  work  of  the  minister.  It  comes  close  home  to  me, 
and  you  must  forgive  me  if  there  is  a  little  bit  of  the 
personal  element  in  it.  We  are  passing  through  a 
curious  transition  of  thought  at  the  present  time, 
caused,  I  believe,  by  the  new  flood  of  thought  in  revela 
tion  and  truth  that  has  come  to  the  world.  They  tell  us 
that  at  the  universities  there  are  fewer  students  looking 
towards  the  ministry  to-day  than  there  have  been  for 
one  hundred  years.  I  believe  that  by  and  by,  when  we 

214 


MINOT  J.  SAVAGE  215 

get  through  with  our  present  confusion— when,  as  Mat 
thew  Arnold,  I  think,  says,  we  are  ' '  born  out  of  the  old 
universe  and  into  the  new  one'* — we  shall  have  a 
grander  church  and  a  grander  and  nobler  religion  and 
a  nobler  ministry  than  the  world  has  ever  known.  In 
spite  of  the  fact  that  Dr.  Van  Dyke  has  left  the  min 
istry  for  another  profession,  I  venture  to  think  that  the 
ministry  is  the  noblest  profession  on  the  face  of  the 
earth. 

He  has  distinguished  himself  as  a  minister;  he  has 
not  only  done  that,  but  he  is  distinguishing  himself 
now  as  a  teacher.  In  the  Talmud  the  old  Hebrew  wise 
men  took  this  ground :  they  said  that  the  teacher  was  to 
be  honored  sometimes  more  than  the  father.  The 
father  gave  his  child  physical  life;  the  teacher  helped 
his  brain  and  soul  to  live,  and  so  it  was  a  higher  and 
finer  thing  than  the  position  of  father  even,  as  honored 
as  that  should  be. 

Dr.  Van  Dyke  has  also  distinguished  himself  as  an 
angler.  I  am  not  sure  that  I  shall  praise  him  here  in 
that  capacity,  but  I  do  not  know  that  I  shall  find  fault 
with  him.  I  will  not  presume  to  criticize,  but  I  will 
confess  that  when  it  comes  to  this  business  of  angling, 
I  am  inclined  to  be  on  the  side  of  the  fishes.  He  has 
done  another  thing ;  he  has  made  himself  distinguished 
as  a  writer  of  stories,  and  those  stories  are  of  the 
inspiring,  clean,  sweet,  fine,  helpful  kind.  He  has  done 
still  more;  he  has  conquered  another  field.  He  is  a 
poet ;  and  right  here  my  jealousy  is  aroused.  You  know 
a  man  is  never  jealous  of  somebody  who  is  not  in  his 
profession;  the  president  of  your  club  would  never 
think  of  getting  jealous  of  Dr.  Van  Dyke  as  a  poet, 


216  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

because  your  president  has  not  distinguished  himself, 
as  far  as  I  know,  by  writing  poetry. 

I  venture  to  state  that  this  is  the  finest  field,  in  some 
ways,  on  which  he  has  entered.  I  believe  in  the  poetry 
of  life,  and  I  believe  with  my  whole  soul  that  the  man 
makes  a  great  mistake  who  thinks  that  poetry  is  merely 
moonshine ;  that  it  is  something  away  up  in  the  ideal,  or 
that  it  does  not  touch  the  practical  life  of  man.  Poetry 
is  the  truest  truth  and  the  most  real  reality  in  human 
life.  Wordsworth  tells  us  in  that  beautiful  ode  of  his, 
and  I  do  not  believe  one  word  of  it,  that  "heaven  lies 
about  us  in  our  infancy ' ' ;  that  there  is  less  of  it  with 
the  growing  boy,  although  he  sees  something  of  the 
beauty  and  the  joy ;  and  that  man,  when  he  reaches  his 
maturity,  comes  into  the  common  light  of  the  common 
place  day.  Wordsworth  himself  is  a  contradiction  of 
his  statement.  He  recognizes  the  beauty  and  the  glory 
of  the  world  in  middle  life  and  in  old  age  as  he  did  not 
and  was  not  able  to  when  he  was  a  boy  or  when  he  was 
a  young  man.  I  pity  the  man  who  does  not  appreciate 
these  high  and  fine  and  beautiful  things  that  poetry 
establishes  and  utters.  Indeed,  gentlemen,  the  man  is 
really  not  a  man  until  he  has  climbed  up  into  the  higher 
and  finer  ranges  of  his  nature.  So  long  as  we  live  only 
in  those  things  which  we  share  with  the  lower  orders  of 
life  beneath  us,  we  have  not  begun  to  live  as  men.  The 
new  ideal,  the  thought  of  truth,  in  beauty,  in  the  con 
ception  of  God,  in  the  dream  of  immortality,  these,  if 
you  choose  to  sit  down  as  a  scientist  and  analyze  human 
nature,  these  you  will  find  to  be  the  things  that  set  man 
apart  as  man,  and  here  is  the  realm  of  the  poetic  and 
the  ideal. 


MINOT  J.   SAVAGE  217 

I  remember  that  Lowell  on  a  certain  occasion,  coming 
across  a  pool  by  the  sea-shore,  looked  down  into  it  and 
saw  strange  forms  of  life,  beautiful  vegetation  and  all 
sorts  of  wonderful  creations.  He  looked  down  for  a 
moment  and  said,  "What  a  poem!"  And  I  remember 
that  James  T.  Fields  tells  us  that  when  he  visited 
Tennyson  on  a  certain  occasion  he  walked  out  with  him 
in  the  twilight ;  it  was  too  dark  for  him  to  see,  and  be 
fore  he  knew  what  had  happened,  Tennyson  was  on  his 
knees,  and  he  said  to  young  Fields,  "Down  on  your 
knees,  man!  Violets,  violets!"  There  was  poetry; 
there  was  the  noblest  and  simplest  manhood.  I  do  not 
believe  that  we  are  outgrowing  the  time  of  the  poetic. 
They  tell  us  that  the  world  is  getting  old  and  decrepit. 
I  do  not  believe  it.  The  scientific  men  tell  us  we  have 
been  here  on  this  planet  something  between  three  and 
four  hundred  thousand  years  at  the  least,  and  instead 
of  the  world's  being  old,  as  I  was  taught  to  believe 
when  a  boy,  I  think  it  is  young.  It  is  only  the  morning 
twilight  yet;  we  are  just  beginning  to  be  civilized  in 
spots,  a  little  here  and  there.  They  tell  us  that  Her 
cules  in  his  infancy  strangled  some  of  the  serpents  that 
crept  around  his  cradle  and  attempted  to  destroy  him. 
This  infant  humanity  of  ours  has  strangled  a  few  of 
the  serpents  that  have  been  crawling  and  hissing 
around  the  cradle  of  its  infancy.  The  growing  age  of 
the  Herculean  labors  of  humanity,  those  that  are  to 
make  conquest  of  the  world  for  the  highest  and  finest 
in  us,  those  are  before  us.  It  is  just  sun-up.  The  day- 
beams  are  shining  over  the  hilltops,  and  the  light  goes 
down  into  some  of  the  valleys.  It  is  to  be  day  by  and 
by,  and  when  that  day  comes  it  is  to  be  a  day  of  the 


218  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ideal,  of  the  poetic,  of  the  spirit  of  the  grand  and  of 
the  human.  I  love  to  think  that  the  mystery  of  the 
world  is  only  being  intensified  by  the  discoveries  of 
science.  The  material  for  poetry  is  all  around  us. 
Think  of  it,  gentlemen!  I  stood  at  the  telephone  the 
other  day ;  I  was  waiting  for  my  friend  to  come,  and  I 
heard  his  footsteps  crossing  the  floor  miles  away  when 
he  was  coming  to  answer  my  call.  Think  of  the  work 
of  electricity;  think  of  the  scientific  men  who  are  un 
raveling  the  star-beams  and  telling  us  what  it  is  that  is 
aflame  uncounted  millions  of  miles  away.  Think  of  the 
age  in  which  we  are  living.  It  is  only  the  people  who 
have  no  poetry  in  their  hearts  who  do  not  find  poetry 
in  this  marvelous,  complex  civilization  of  ours  to-day. 
As  Lowell  has  expressed  it,  I  can  quote  just  a  little, 
* '  If  thou  hast  wanderings  in  the  wilderness  and  vine  in 
Sinai,  it  is  thy  soul  is  poor ;  there  towers  the  mountain 
of  the  voice  no  less,  and  whoso  seeks  shall  find. ' '  And 
the  one  poem  of  Dr.  Van  Dyke's  which,  if  I  may  ven 
ture  to  discriminate,  has  pleased  me  more  than  any 
other,  is  the  ''Toiling  of  Felix,"  he  who  sought  the 
Christ,  the  ideal  beauty  and  the  ideal  truth,  and  found 
it  in  felling  the  timbers,  in  shaping  the  rocks,  in  build 
ing  the  great  structures  of  the  world.  There  is  poetry 
in  our  subterranean  tunnels,  poetry  in  our  sky-scrapers, 
in  our  steam-engines,  in  our  electricity,  and  in  our  tele 
phones.  It  only  needs  the  poet  to  find  it  and  give  it 
utterance. 


EICHAED  WATSON  GILDER 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  HENRY  VAN  DYKE, 
DECEMBER  23,  1904 

THE  Lotos  Club  is  a  standing  proof  that  the  people 
of  the  busiest  city  in  the  world  are  not  altogether 
busy  in  the  contemplation  of  the  things  of  this  world. 
If  not  often  a  participant  in  your  delightful  meetings, 
I  have  watched  them  from  the  outside  with  applause 
and  great  interest.  There  are  many  on  the  other  side 
of  the  world  who  think  that  in  New  York  we  care  for 
nothing  but  worldly  success,  connected  with  the  amass 
ing  of  great  fortunes,  which,  of  course,  is  a  success  not 
to  be  despised,  especially  when  the  fortunes  are  widely 
distributed.  But  this  club  is  a  sort  of  academy  to  make 
distinction  for  men  who  think.  The  psychology  of  the 
after-dinner  speech  is  one  which  interests  me  intensely. 
I  do  not  know  why  it  is  that  the  speaker  takes  the  lib 
erty  of  being  intensely  confessional  and  personal,  or 
why  he  takes  the  liberty  of  being  at  times  extremely 
complimentary.  That  I  should  stand  up  and  say 
things  to  Dr.  Van  Dyke  formally,  to  my  good  friend, 
that  I  should  not  dare  to  say  to  him  informally,  is  an 
amazing  liberty,  just  as  it  would  be  if  I  should  talk 
about  myself,  an  amazing  liberty  and  an  amazing  in 
discretion. 

Mr.  Lord  was  to  have  read  my  speech,  but  he  says  I 
219 


220  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

must  read  it.  Some  of  you  know  that  I  have  been  a 
little  under  the  weather.  I  want  it  understood  that  I 
am  better,  but  not  fit  for  jury  duty.  Please  do  not  tell 
Mr.  Jerome,  because  he  is  trying  to  save  me  from  duty 
on  the  Grand  Jury;  but  if  I  had  spoken  I  would  have 
said  something  like  this.  I  would  have  said  that  Dr. 
Van  Dyke  has  been  not  only  all  the  things  that  they 
have  said  about  him,  but  he  is  a  man,  and  I  am  glad 
that  he  is  a  man.  He  is  an  awfully  good  citizen;  he 
has  long  been  one  of  our  best  citizens.  Princeton  is 
only  a  suburb  of  New  York,  so  therefore  he  is  a  citizen 
of  New  York. 

Dr.  Van  Dyke  used  his  pulpit  once  to  preach  a  ser 
mon  on  international  copyright,  which  appealed  to  my 
understanding.  I  once  visited  the  White  House  with  a 
friend  of  Mr.  Roosevelt,  named  Mr.  Cleveland.  He 
asked  me,  "Why  are  you  so  much  interested  in  inter 
national  copyright?"  I  said,  "With  me  it  is  only  a 
moral  question."  It  was  only  a  moral  question  with 
Dr.  Van  Dyke,  and  he  preached  the  sermon  in  the 
little  old  Brick  Church,  and  he  went  down  to  Washing 
ton  and  preached  it  to  one  or  two  congressmen.  Most 
of  the  congressmen  stayed  away.  The  others  heard 
it,  and  it  helped  us  in  that  great  enterprise. 

I  do  not  think  enough  has  been  said  to-night  on  this 
subject,  although  it  has  been  implied.  I  charge  Dr. 
Van  Dyke  with  being  a  poet,  and  I  am  able  to  prove 
the  charge,  if  the  defendant  should  refuse  to  plead 
guilty.  I  can  bring  any  amount  of  testimony  into  the 
Lotos  court  to  sustain  the  accusation,  in  the  shape  of 
various  odes,  sonnets,  lyrics,  and  such  like.  As  to  my 
self,  it  has  been  authoritatively  decided  both  by  the 


RICHARD  WATSON  GILDER         221 

legislature  and  the  Court  of  Appeals  that  I  am  not  a 
poet;  for  when  each  of  those  bodies  separately  was 
solicited  not  to  favor  certain  tenement-house  reforms 
on  the  ground  that  the  chairman  of  the  commission  was 
a  poet,  they  forthwith  decided  against  my  accusers  by 
taking  the  action  the  said  chairman  desired. 

I  have  heard  the  word  "poet"  used  here  to-night  in 
a  complimentary  sense.  It  is  not  always  a  compliment ; 
there  is  only  one  community  that  I  have  ever  lived  in 
or  visited  where  the  whole  community  considered  it  an 
honor  to  be  a  poet.  That  was  a  little  district  in  the 
south  of  France,  where  it  was  considered  that  if  you 
did  not  write  verses  you  were  under  suspicion. 

I  went  down  to  Gettysburg  with  George  William 
Curtis,  and  Mr.  Godkin,  and  some  of  that  ilk  once.  Mr. 
Curtis  was  to  deliver  an  address  on  the  twenty-fifth 
anniversary  of  the  battle  of  Gettysburg.  In  the  party 
there  was  a  gentleman  who  asked  me  what  I  was  going 
to  do  that  afternoon.  I  said  I  was  going  to  read  some 
verses  to  one  of  the  regiments.  He  looked  at  me  with 
pity  and  suspicion,  and  he  said,  "I  did  n't  know  you 
did  that  sort  of  thing. ' '  In  the  case  of  Dr.  Van  Dyke 
there  is  no  escape.  But  while  I  contend  that  Dr.  Van 
Dyke  is  a  poet,  I  acquit  him  of  being  a  minor  poet,  for 
the  reason  that  while  we  do  not  nickname  any  man 
a  minor  sculptor,  painter,  architect,  dramatist,  or 
artist  in  general,  it  is  unfair  to  call  a  poet  minor. 

You  know  the  story  of  the  certain  actor  who  was  ad 
mitted  to  heaven  because  he  was  n't  much  of  an  actor. 
But  the  only  question  as  to  a  poet  is  whether  he  is  a 
poet  at  all;  if  he  is,  we  ought  so  to  call  him  and  not 
give  him  nicknames.  My  contention  is  that  whatever 


222  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

else  Dr.  Van  Dyke  may  be,  he  is  a  poet,  and  a  true 
poet. 

The  thing  that  will  longest  be  remembered,  perhaps 
— although  there  are  many  things  of  Dr.  Van  Dyke's 
accomplishment  that  will  long  be  remembered— is  his 
influence  upon  that  perhaps  most  dubious  of  all  sub 
jects,  theology.  I  will  only  say  that  and  let  it  go.  The 
things  that  will  certainly  be  remembered  are  his  beauti 
ful  and  solemn  and  poetical  verses,  which  I  believe  will 
never  be  blotted  from  American  literature. 


GEORGE  HARVEY 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  HENEY  VAN  DYKE, 
DECEMBEE  23,  1904 

WHAT  is  the  distinctive  peculiarity  of  Dr.  Van 
Dyke,  which,  makes  the  selection  of  him  as  your 
guest  of  honor  seem  so  wholly  natural,  and  proves  to  be 
so  obviously  pleasing  to  this  assembled  aggregation  of 
talent,  tact,  and  cynicism  ?  My  answer  would  be  that  it 
is  because,  in  a  greater  degree  than  any  one  else  in 
America,  he  is  the  embodiment  of  sane  idealism.  No 
body  needs  to  be  told  that,  even  in  these  commercial 
days,  we  do  not  suffer  from  lack  of  morals.  There 
probably  never  was  a  time  when  the  supply  of  that 
commodity  met  the  demand  in  greater  variety  or 
luxuriance.  The  pulpit,  or  so  much  of  it  as  is  graced 
by  the  notion  that  the  man  of  God  can  do  his  most  effec 
tive  service  by  climbing  down  to  the  level  of  the  man 
of  clay,  sheds  morals  in  great  profusion  over  the  heads 
of  the  multitude.  Nor  in  all  the  realm  of  literature, 
from  the  swashbuckling  novel  to  the  poems  of  child 
hood,  from  ponderous  reviews  to  yellow  journals,  can 
we,  by  the  exercise  of  the  utmost  ingenuity,  escape  the 
inevitable  moral  lesson.  Even  finance  has  a  code  of 
casual  morals.  Sometimes  those  who  deal  in  them  im 
pose  them  gratuitously  and  with  much  blare  of  trum 
pets  upon  a  helpless  people;  but  in  any  case,  at  any 

223 


224  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

time,  they  may  be  had  for  a  price.  The  reason  of  this 
undoubtedly  is  that  experience  has  proven  that  what 
we  term  morality  is  not  only  the  handmaid,  but  an  es 
sential  element  of  material  achievement. 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  intimating  that  your 
guest  is  not  a  moral  man.  I  dare  say  that  he  is,  but  so 
are  we  all.  And  yet  he  is  in  the  place  of  honor.  The 
difference  is  that  our  voices  are  those  of  the  quail,  and 
his  is  the  note  of  the  lark.  It  is  the  developed  spiritual 
quality  of  this  man's  heart  that  wins  our  glad  homage. 
It  is  the  purity  of  thought,  the  uplifting  endeavor,  the 
effective  gentleness  of  purpose,  all  garbed  in  beautiful 
lucidity  of  expression,  that  holds  our  respect  and  draws 
our  very  reverence  more  signally  than  at  any  time  since 
the  great  soul  of  Emerson  passed  out  of  its  human  form. 
It  is  good  that  this  is  so,  because  it  is  high  time  that  this 
overgrown,  overworked,  over-successful  people,  whose 
very  existence  sprang  from  the  Puritan  conscience,  be 
again  influenced  and  inspired  by  that  sane  idealism  of 
which  Henry  Van  Dyke  is  the  foremost  living  exponent. 


IRVING  BACHELLER 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  HENEY  VAN  DYKE, 
DECEMBER  23,  1904 

I  HAVE  just  returned  from  a  visit  to  one  of  the  old- 
time  guides  on  the  northern  side  of  the  Adirondacks. 
To  him  St.  Lawrence  County  is  the  world,  and  game, 
the  woods,  and  huckleberries  the  fatness  thereof.  God 
is  only  a  word,  and  mostly  part  of  a  compound  ad 
jective,  and  "Fisherman's  Luck"  is  the  only  scripture 
with  which  he  is  personally  familiar.  Hell  is  the  city 
of  Ogdensburg,  whither  he  once  journeyed,  and  the 
devil  is  a  lawyer  who  once  bullied  him  for  an  hour  in 
the  witness-chair.  His  lies  have  been  for  the  delight 
of  those  he  loves ;  his  profanity,  for  the  emphasis  of  his 
affection,  or  for  the  expression  of  well-grounded  dis 
approval;  his  soul  has  never  given  him  any  more  con 
cern  than  his  body,  for  the  reason,  as  I  am  assured,  that 
both  are  healthy.  This  man  lives  on  the  northern  side 
of  the  Adirondacks;  his  spirit  is  that  of  the  pioneer, 
dauntless  and  unconquerable ;  his  history  is  the  epic  of 
the  woods.  His  memory  reaches  from  a  time  when,  as 
it  would  seem,  God  entered  the  wilderness  and  his  paean 
of  welcome  was  on  every  trail,  "Come,  all  ye  that  are 
weary";  yet  he  lives  to-day  when  the  title  has  largely 
passed  to  the  mill-owner,  and  the  welcome  upon  the 
aisles  of  the  forest  is  displaced  by  a  warning.  In  his 

225 


226  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

young  manhood  he  walked  from  Saranac  to  Cranberry 
in  twenty-four  hours,  under  a  heavy  pack.  He  lives  to 
day,  when  the  lazy  degenerate  forgets  your  comfort  in 
the  contemplation  of  his  own.  The  steam-locomotive  now 
passes  his  cabin.  Within  five  years  the  hills  around  it 
have  been  stripped  naked.  The  foliage, has  been  burned 
away;  there  are  ashes  and  charred  tree  trunks  in  the 
valleys ;  the  rock  bones  of  the  hill  lie  bare  and  bleaching 
in  the  sun.  The  springs  and  water  brooks  which  Dr. 
Van  Dyke  has  taught  us  to  love  are  running  dry.  The 
rivers  that  flow  northward  have  slackened  their  pace, 
and  the  merry  song  with  which  they  leaped  along  in  my 
boyhood  has  been  stilled  to  a  low  and  solemn  sort  of 
music  which  is  more  like  a  song  of  mourning.  The 
water-wheels  have  stopped  on  account  of  the  feeble  flow, 
and  we  read  to-day  that  the  industries  of  the  East  are 
threatened  by  an  unheard-of  drought ;  and  in  the  midst 
of  these  facts  one  hundred  and  fifty  men  are  cutting  a 
swath  a  mile  wide  and  four  long  from  Wanakena  to 
Carter's  Plain,  in  the  most  magnificent  pine  forest 
with  which  man  ever  was  blessed  on  earth.  The  time 
has  come  when  the  question  will  be  answered  once  for 
all,  "Who  owns  the  mountains?"  But  I  am  not  here 
to  raise  the  voice  of  complaint  in  the  house  of  good 
cheer.  Was  it  St.  Peter  who  said  to  his  friends  after 
the  most  terrible  tragedy  in  history,  when  they  were 
consulting  what  was  best  to  do,  "As  for  myself,  I  shall 
go  fishing"?  He  had  just  seen  the  most  sublime  spec 
tacle  of  history,  but  he  said,  "Let  us  fish." 

I  remember,  last  summer,  I  had  an  engagement  to  go 
fishing  in  the  woods.  I  was  extremely  busy  up  to  the 
moment  for  departure,  but  before  that  time  I  went  to 


IRVING  BACHELLER  227 

my  tailor  and  asked  him  to  make  me  an  outing  suit  and 
send  it  to  the  point  I  designated.  He  wanted  to  know 
what  material  I  desired,  and  I  said,  "I  have  n't  time  to 
think  about  it.  Send  me  something  that  is  light,  and 
something  that  will  be  comfortable  and  respectable." 
Then  I  rushed  to  my  train  and  went  to  my  work.  By 
and  by  I  started  to  go  fishing.  I  arrived  at  the  little 
town  of  Wanakena,  and  there  I  found  the  package  from 
the  tailor.  I  opened  it  and  adjusted  the  garments  to 
my  person.  There  was  a  Norfolk  jacket  and  waistcoat 
and  knee-breeches.  The  material  was  extremely  light 
in  color,  and  it  was  cut  into  squares  of  considerable 
magnitude  by  stripes  which  ran  north,  east,  west,  and 
south.  As  I  stood  before  the  mirror  I  reminded  myself 
of  the  pictures  of  the  globe  cut  by  those  parallels  so 
useful  to  the  navigator.  I  could  have  located  any  part 
of  my  person  by  degrees  of  longitude  and  latitude. 
Down  in  the  vicinity  of  the  south  pole  the  cloth  lay  in 
deep  ridges  and  furrows,  and  at  the  equator  was  a  large 
mountain  sloping  gradually  toward  the  intemperate 
zone.  Rivers  of  perspiration  were  flowing  down  from 
the  snowy  summit  of  the  far  north,  and  the  rim  of  my 
hat  resembled,  somehow,  the  arctic  circle.  I  was  not 
much  pleased  with  the  suit,  but  it  was  the  only  suit  I 
had ;  so  I  sallied  forth  and  began,  as  it  were,  to  move  in 
my  orbit.  I  was  not  aware  to  what  extent  my  clothing 
had  expanded  my  person  until  I  was  walking  along, 
and  a  gentleman  inquired  how  wide  I  was  across  the 
shoulders.  I  hesitated,  not  remembering  the  figures, 
but  I  heard  a  familiar  voice  saying,  "You  mean  across 
the  withers?"  To  which  he  said,  "Yes,  I  should  think 
about  two  axles  and  a  piece  of  shoe-string."  I  recog- 


228  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

nized  the  voice  of  the  venerable  guide  of  whom  I  have 
spoken.  I  greeted  him;  he  was  to  go  fishing  with  me, 
and  I  had  waited  until  the  next  train  came  in,  bearing 
my  friend,  and  we  started  up  the  river.  I  had  a  book 
with  me,  and  took  it  out  of  my  pocket  and  sat  com 
fortably  in  my  canoe  and  began  to  read.  It  was  "Fish 
erman's  Luck,"  by  our  honored  guest.  I  turned  to 
Uncle  Fide,  the  guide,  and  said,  "Here  is  a  book  you 
ought  to  read."  He  said,  "What  's  the  name  of  it?" 
and  I  said,  "Fisherman's  Luck."  He  said,  "I  have 
read  it."  I  said,  "That  surprises  me;  I  did  n't  know 
you  had  any  familiarity  with  Dr.  Van  Dyke."  He 
said,  "Well,  now,  I  '11  tell  you.  I  had  to  spend  last 
winter  in  camp,  and  I  was  snowed  in,  and  it  was  the 
only  book  I  had.  It  was  left  by  a  fellow  stopping  with 
his  wife  the  summer  before."  I  went  on  reading,  and 
presently  came  to  the  essay  entitled  "  Talkability, "  and 
in  the  midst  of  that  you  will  remember  the  doctor 
quotes  from  Montaigne  to  the  effect  that  good  things, 
gaiety,  friendship,  and  freedom,  are  necessary  to  good 
companionship  in  the  woods.  I  said,  ' '  Look  here ;  let  's 
try  to  be  good  for  a  week;  and  I  don't  know  of  any 
better  way  to  start  in  than  by  agreeing  to  tell  the  truth 
to  each  other.  I  have  always  suspected  you  of  having 
some  respect  for  the  truth,  and  it  seems  that  you  ought 
not  to  hide  it  under  a  bushel. ' '  Well,  he  agreed  to  that, 
and  I  said,  "There  's  another  thing.  Now  let  's  have 
no  more  profanity ;  just  let  's  get  along  with  Christian 
sort  of  talk."  He  said,  "I  think  that  will  be  easier  for 
you  than  for  me ;  I  have  got  you  fellows  on  my  hands, 
and  it  is  a  good  pull  with  a  paddle  up  to  the  Plains, 
and  there  's  some  fly-fishing  on  the  way,  but  I  will  try. ' ' 


IRVING  BACHELLER  229 

"  It  is  singular, ' '  he  says,  ' '  what  a  change  there  is  in 
the  world.  They  have  got  a  meeting-house  down  at 
Wanakena,  and  some  of  them  go  to  meeting  and  get 
religion,  and  there  is  one  of  them  that  is  so  afraid  of 
doing  wrong  that  he  don't  do  anything.  Another  one 
is  determined  to  stop  swearing,  and  so  he  don't  say 
nothing,  for  fear  he  will."  Says  he,  "He  's  spoiling 
himself  for  his  family,  and  no  one  likes  him  any  more ; 
he  's  all  withering  up;  it  's  kind  of  burning  him  up 
holding  of  it  in;  I  think  it  's  better  to  just  let  it 
naturally  drain  off."  I  said,  "All  right;  but  do  the 
best  you  can."  So  we  went  on,  and  we  began  to  tell 
the  truth  to  each  other,  my  friend  and  myself,  in  a 
rather  frank  fashion,  and  we  came  presently  to  the 
camp,  where  there  was  a  young  man  in  charge  who  had 
recently  returned  from  the  West.  He  told  about  hav 
ing  bought  one  of  my  books  the  Christmas  before  as  a 
present  for  a  friend— this  was  in  Livingston,  Montana ; 
and  he  said  that  after  he  had  bought  the  book  and  as 
he  was  going  up  an  alley  he  heard  a  shot,  but  he  did  n't 
think  anything  of  it  until  he  got  home,  when  he  found 
the  bullet  was  buried  in  the  leaves,  about  half-way 
through.  ' '  Well, ' '  says  my  friend,  ' '  it  takes  something 
more  than  the  energy  of  a  bullet  to  get  through  one  of 
Bacheller's  books."  So  we  went  on  telling  the  truth 
to  each  other,  and  pretty  soon  he  knew  what  I  thought 
of  his  talents  and  his  philosophy,  and  I  knew  what  he 
thought  of  mine.  "We  was  both  a  little  sore,"  as 
Uncle  Fide  would  say ;  and  presently  the  old  man  said, 
"You  fellers  have  forgot  one  thing :  Dr.  Van  Dyke  says 
in  the  book  that  you  have  got  to  have  friendship,  and 
you  fellers  can  never  be  friends,  telling  the  truth  to 


230  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

each  other. "  So  we  agreed  that  it  was  about  time  to 
get  down  to  a  basis  of  politeness,  anyway,  and  we 
agreed  to  relax  a  little  bit.  Presently  he  suggested  that 
we  enter  into  a  compact  under  which  he  should  insist 
before  all  comers  that  I  was  one  of  the  great  men  in  the 
world,  and  I  was  to  do  the  same  for  him.  Well,  I  did  it, 
and  he  did  it ;  but,  do  you  know,  although  things  went  on 
more  comfortably  after  that,  a  very  singular  thing  hap 
pened:  folks  believed  me,  and  they  did  n't  believe  him. 
While  it  is  no  wonder,  after  all,  if  a  misapprehension 
did  arise,  I  discovered  pretty  soon  that  I  was  telling  the 
truth.  That  very  night  we  sat  before  1ihe  camp-fire,  and 
Uncle  Fide  sat  on  his  haunches;  he  just  had  lifted  a 
coal  out  of  the  fire  and  put  it  on  his  pipe  with  his 
fingers.  I  said  to  him,  ''Uncle  Fide,  who  owns  the 
mountains  ? ' '  And  he  said,  ' '  I  will  tell  you.  I  used  to 
think  that  I  owned  them  as  much  as  anybody,  and  I 
was  inclined  to  agree  with  Dr.  Van  Dyke,  until  one  day 
I  was  walking  across  Bear  Mountain,  and  a  man  came 
along  and  ordered  me  off;  then  I  went  over  to  Blue 
Mountain,  and  another  man  ordered  me  off.  It  's 
curious,  I  have  lived  to  see  wonderful  things  happen, 
and  I  would  n't  be  at  all  surprised  if  I  should  wake  up 
some  morning  and  find  myself  in  the  air,  and  turn 
around  and  see  some  fellow  who  owned  some  big  cor 
poration  walking  off  with  the  earth  on  his  back."  My 
friend  and  I  nudged  each  other,  and  we  looked  at  Uncle 
Fide,  with  his  bald  peak  and  a  little  fringe  of  gray  hair 
around  his  ears,  and  he  said,  "It  won't  be  long." 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  HENRY  VAN  DYKE, 
DECEMBER  23,  1904 

I  HAVE  no  business  to  be  here,  because  I  have  a 
relaxed  vocal  cord  and  I  cannot  talk.  But  Henry 
Van  Dyke  has  a  magic  in  making  dumb  things  speak, 
and  so  I  came  in  that  faith  to-night.  The  first  thing 
that  strikes  me  about  him,  and  if  anybody  thinks  I  am 
going  to  stand  up  here  for  ten  minutes  and  talk  about 
Dr.  Van  Dyke,  after  the  manner  which  the  London 
Punch  once  described  as  belonging  to  the  Marquis  of 
Hartington,  now  the  Duke  of  Devonshire,  an  air  of 
' '  general  ubedamnitiveness, ' '  he  is  very  much  mistaken. 
I  am  here  to  speak  of  my  friend,  and  I  am  going  to 
speak  of  my  friend.  The  first  thing  that  strikes  me 
about  him  is  the  fact  that  he  has  always  had,  to  an  ex 
traordinary  degree,  the  right  to  carry  the  title  of  his 
own  book,  "Fisherman's  Luck."  Here  it  is  the  night 
before  Christmas  Eve,  and  in  twenty-four  hours  his 
stockings  are  to  be  hung  up  and  crammed  full,  as  they 
always  are,  and  to-night  he  has  achieved  that  delightful 
experience  of  being  a  guest  of  the  Lotos  Club.  You 
remember  how  Dr.  Johnson  once  described  a  club  as  "A 
company  of  good  fellows  meeting  regularly  under  cer 
tain  conditions. ' '  I  cannot  help  thinking  that  Johnson 

231 


232  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

would  have  liked  the  Lotos  Club.  He  liked  the  fra- 
Lrrniicc  of  tin*  bowl  ami  Iho  giMUM'ous  trencher  dish;  and 
he  liked  to  sit  up  late  at  night,  as  I  understand  some 
of  you  do  down  here.  There  is  a  tradition  that  on  a 
certain  occasion  he  celebrated  the  success  of  a  young 
woman  poet  by  inviting  her  to  a  company,  and  they  sat 
up  all  night;  and  in  order  to  give  distinction  to  the 
feast  he  had  a  large  fresh  apple-pie  made  which  was 
crowned  with  bay.  Boswell  records  that  as  the  hours 
wore  away,  Dr.  Johnson 's  face  became  rosier  and  rosier 
until  the  dawn.  Now  we  find  here  to-night  the  bay  and 
the  laurel ;  we  have  the  mountain  pine  for  purity,  and 
the  Scotch  heather  for  the  sweep  of  the  sky;  we  have 
the  balsam  for  the  fragrance  and  the  warmth  of  friend 
ship,  and  we  have  the  blue  flower  for  the  eternal 
search  of  the  poet,  and  those  who  have  the  poet's  soul 
for  the  ideal.  Gentlemen,  after  all,  it  is  a  matter  of 
luck.;  If  you  meet  this  man  on  the  well-kept  lawn  of 
criticism,  or  in  the  great  open  stretches  of  nature  study, 
or  in  the  fertile  and  well-tilled  fields  of  affection,  in  the 
height  of  the  pulpit,  or  in  the  quiet  and  secret  places  of 
poetry,  wherever  you  find  him,  challenge  him  with  that 
call  which  the  fisherman  always  knows  and  recognizes, 
"What  luck?"  And  if  he  tells  the  truth,  as  he  is 
bound  to,  there  is  but  one  answer  for  him  to  make, 
"Good  luck."  Look  at  his  rod  and  reel  and  his  book 
of  flies ;  they  are  the  very  best  that  can  be  had ;  educa 
tion  has  done  everything  it  could  for  him  except  spoil 
ing  him.  Even  Princeton  could  n't  do  that.  I  am 
reminded  here  of  a  story  of  a  gentleman  who  once  saw 
three  men  before  him  at  a  booking-office  in  Liverpool 
three  or  four  years  ago.  They  had  all  just  landed,  and 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE  233 

he  overheard  the  conversation.  The  young  man  at  the 
head  of  the  line  said  to  the  ticket-seller,  "  Three  for 
London."  And  the  man  inside  the  wicket  said,  "What 
class?"  And  the  man  at  the  head  of  the  line  replied, 
"1900,  Princeton." 

I  would  like  to  overhaul  Dr.  Van  Dyke's  outfit;  I 
think  I  should  find  all  those  dun-brown  faded  flies  per 
haps  all  cast  out  for  those  flies  which  are  much  more  apt 
to  attract  the  eye  on  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  stir 
the  sleeping  fish  which  he  wishes  to  arouse  beneath.  He 
has  been  a  student  all  his  life,  and  he  has  become  a 
scholar.  I  want  to  say  that,  and  then  I  qualify  it  at 
once  because  I  do  not  want  to  prejudice  you  against 
him.  He  can  speak  to  you  in  several  languages.  It 
reminded  me  of  the  Irishman  in  Paris,  who  called  upon 
a  friend  who  has  a  maid.  He  asked  for  his  friend  in 
French,  and  the  maid  said,  before  she  answered  him, 
4 '  He  is  English. ' '  He  asked  her  how  she  knew,  in  Eng 
lish,  to  which  she  replied,  "No,  he  is  Irish."  Then  he 
said,  "Well,  you  know  I  am  English  by  my  French, 
and  now  you  know  that  I  am  Irish  by  my  English." 
As  I  say,  he  can  speak  in  various  languages.  There  is 
one  language  in  which  he  reaches  the  hearts  of  all  of  us. 
I  am  not  here  to  tell  you  how  educated  he  is,  but  his 
erudition  reminds  me  of  that  of  the  young  lady  from 
Boston,  who  is  reputed,  I  will  not  vouch  for  it,  but  she 
is  reputed  to  read  Henry  James  in  the  original.  But 
all  of  those  tools,  all  those  modern  flies,  all  those  patent 
reels  and  rods  he  has,  but  so  have  a  great  many  others, 
and  you  will  find  them  fishing  in  every  stream,  and  you 
sometimes  feel  as  you  do  when  traveling  through 
France,  where,  in  every  river,  and  every  stream,  from 


234  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

every  bridge,  there  are  patient  fishermen  who  fish  and 
fish  and  never  move,  the  rods  never  tremble,  and  all  is 
silent  there,  but  still  they  fish  and  fish,  and  catch 
nothing. 

Henry  James  wittily  said,  "The  French  love  art  for 
art's  sake;  yet  the  same  people,  with  the  same  outfits, 
are  fishing  everywhere,  rarely  catching  anything;  and 
when  they  do,  what  queer  things  they  draw  out  of  the 
water!  They  say,  'Look  at  the  string,  it  is  a  record 
catch.'  '  He  has  had  the  luck,  and  we  might  as  well 
confess  that  in  the  arts  luck  is  everything.  But  do  not 
think  that  all  the  work  in  the  world,  and  all  the  pa 
tience,  high-mindedness,  and  intellectual  endeavor  in 
this  world,  will  ever  take  the  place  of  the  quality  given 
to  those  whom  the  gods  love.  Do  you  think  Shakespeare 
ever  spent  much  time  thinking  over  such  lines  as 
"Where  late  the  sweet  bard  sang,"  or  any  other  of 
those  immortal  lines  that  leaped  off  the  end  of  his  pen? 
Not  at  all;  it  is  what  you  call  bull  luck,  and  it  is  the 
same  thing  in  every  one  of  the  arts.  I  could  quote  line 
after  line  of  Dr.  Van  Dyke's  that  I  know  he  never  spent 
five  minutes  on.  Just  his  infernal  luck. 

Well,  after  all,  gentlemen,  the  gods  are  not  blind 
when  they  dispose  of  their  gifts,  and  I  suspect  that  the 
man  chooses  the  gods  before  the  gods  choose  him.  There 
is  an  old  tradition  that  long  ago  the  sirens  and  the 
muses  contended  together  on  the  shores  of  Crete  for 
supremacy  in  the  arts,  and  that  when  the  sirens  were 
defeated  they  plunged  into  the  sea,  and  went  off  to  a 
distance,  and  began  to  sing  their  kind  of  song,  while  the 
muses  sang  theirs.  Now,  one  reason  why  luck  has  al 
ways  come  this  man's  way  is  that  he  has  been  able  to 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE  235 

distinguish  between  the  song  of  the  sirens  and  the  song 
of  the  muses.  Art  is  always  in  revolt,  and  the  muses 
are  always  in  revolt,  and  the  spirit  of  the  artist  is  al 
ways  the  spirit  of  spontaneity  and  freedom,  and  in 
every  age  the  man  who  sees  the  work  that  goes  fairly 
home  to  the  imagination  and  the  heart  of  his  time  is  the 
man  who  breaks  through  the  conventions.  But  it  is  one 
thing  to  fight  against  conventions  in  the  interest  of  the 
eternal  freedom  of  the  human  soul,  and  it  is  another 
thing  to  confuse  conventions  with  law,  and  fight  against 
law.  The  real  artist  is  the  man  whose  soul  is  aflame 
against  artificial  barriers  and  the  law  which  crystallizes 
into  tyranny,  and  he  is  also  the  man  who  knows  the 
difference  between  law  and  conventionalized  usage,  and 
who  knows  that  it  is  the  very  essence  of  art  that  it 
should  be  obedient  to  the  law.  And  wherever  there  is  a 
great  thing  spoken  of,  done  with  hand,  pencil,  chisel, 
or  sound,  in  any  form  of  material,  wherever  it  is  done, 
it  is  done  in  obedience  to  the  law  which  is  not  laid  down 
or  stamped  from  without,  but  which  is  the  expression 
of  the  nature  within.  If  a  man  were  to  judge  by  some 
of  the  recent  dramas,  such  as,  for  instance,  ' '  The  Dead 
City/'  he  would  imagine  that  the  only  way  in  which  a 
man  could  be  a  free  man  was  to  commit  adultery,  that 
the  only  way  to  be  strong  was  to  be  violent,  and  that  no 
man  could  be  a  full-fledged  man  until  he  began  to  curse. 
Is  not  that  the  expression  of  the  idea  of  the  revolt 
against  the  organized  conventionalities  of  life,  as  it  is 
found  in  a  great  deal  of  what  we  call  the  up-to-date 
dramatic  poetry  and  up-to-date  dramatic  fiction  ?  It  is 
the  distinction  which  this  man  has  made,  between  power 
and  violence,  which  has  helped  him  to  be  the  artist  that 


236  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

he  is;  it  is  the  distinction  between  Thucydides  and 
Hector,  between  Governor  Vardaman  and  President 
Roosevelt.  Wherever  you  find  him  whipping  the 
streams  or  climbing  the  mountains,  you  come  upon  an 
other  secret  of  his  power,  and  that  is  the  fact  that  he  is 
always  seeking  the  original  fountain-springs  of  life. 
A  great  many  love  bottled  waters,  taken  from  the 
Pierian  spring,  sterilized  and  put  up  in  their  libraries. 
But  theirs  is  the  quality  of  the  books  that  are  written 
from  books.  This  man  lives  in  the  open ;  he  knows  what 
it  is  to  be  out  of  doors,  and  he  knows  that  the  secret  of 
all  true  writing  is  to  write  out  of  your  libraries.  I  re 
member  it  is  said  of  Goethe,  that  even  in  the  coldest 
weather,  when  he  felt  obliged  to  have  as  near  an  ap 
proach  to  a  fire  as  a  German  stove  can  accommodate,  he 
always  had  the  windows  wide  open.  Scholarship  is  a 
profession  for  which  I  have  the  profoundest  respect, 
but  the  gift  of  writing  comes  from  the  gods.  There  are 
three  classes  that  stand  in  the  way  of  real  recognition 
and  a  common  understanding  of  true  writing  in  this 
country  to-day.  There  is  the  class  that  goes  with  the 
crowd  and  imagines  that  if  a  thing  is  popular  therefore 
it  is  good.  There  is  the  other  class  that  holds  the  re 
verse,  that  because  a  thing  is  popular,  therefore  it 
is  bad;  and  then  there  is  the  class  who  judge  a  book 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  literary  scholar  rather 
than  the  standpoint  of  the  literary  instinct  and 
feeling.  They  are  the  class  who  explain  in  a  superior 
manner  that  Shakespeare  had  no  right  to  be  ignorant 
of  the  fact  that  there  was  no  sea-coast  in  Bohemia,  and 
who  would  dwell  at  great  length  upon  his  general  law 
lessness.  And  then  there  are  those  who  believe  that 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE  237 

literature  is  written  to-day  for  the  few,  and  that  it  is 
practised  by  a  cult,  that  its  language  ought  to  be  a  sign- 
language,  understood  only  of  those  with  a  special  train 
ing  to  comprehend  it;  that  it  should  be  occult,  and 
symbolical,  and  reserved  to  those  who  have  penetrated 
to  the  innermost  shrine.  The  fact  is  that  literature  is 
just  the  biggest  and  most  indifferent  and  careless  thing 
in  the  whole  world.  In  its  great  moments  it  is  always 
with  the  crowd  and  never  of  the  crowd.  It  is  full  of  the 
wisdom  of  life,  and  it  is  monstrous  indifferent  to  the 
technicalities  of  scholarship,  and  it  always  speaks  the 
language  of  the  public  fair  and  square.  Professor 
Palmer  called  attention  recently  to  the  fact  that  litera 
ture  is  always  greatest  when  the  age  is  least  bookish 
and  most  talkative,  and  that  the  literature  which  sur 
vives  is  the  literature  which  comes  nearest  to  the  speak 
ing  language,  the  speaking  dialect.  The  bookish  age  is 
always  decadent.  The  talking  age,  with  its  ideas  living 
on  the  tongue  of  the  moment,  is  always  the  vital  age. 
Those  who  hold  that  to  reach  the  hearts  of  one's  fellows 
by  the  pen  is  to  be  held  as  unrighteous,  will  consider  Dr. 
Van  Dyke  as  a  monstrous  sinner,  almost  the  worst  of 
his  time.  He  has  done  what  Matthew  Arnold  explained 
was  the  secret  of  his  success,  borrowing  an  expression  of 
a  famous  French  litterateur:  he  "put  his  heart  into  his 
business."  He  has  discharged,  to  me,  the  highest 
functions  of  art,  and  I  do  not  hesitate  to  say,  although 
it  is  not  at  all  popular  with  the  people  with  whom  he 
associates  professionally,  that  he  is  an  optimist.  When 
I  say  that,  I  do  not  mean  that  he  has  always  a  pleasant 
countenance  and  thinks  well  of  his  fellow-man  only,  but 
he  does  what  I  think  the  greatest  artists  in  every  time 


238  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

have  done.    He  has  been  one  of  our  leaders  in  the  pur 
suit  of  happiness. 

Dr.  Van  Dyke  has  had  the  pursuit  of  happiness  so 
close,  and  so  much  a  part  of  himself,  that  while  he  has 
not  hesitated  to  speak  the  truth,  yet  he  has  always  led 
us  in  the  way  in  which  happiness  lies.  He  was  born  a 
skylark,  and  not  an  owl.  He  has  not  been  one  of  the 
owls  that  sit  back  in  the  shadow,  with  their  imposing 
luminous  eyes,  regarding  the  skylark  and  finding  it 
impossible  to  realize  how  the  skylark  can  do  what  he 
does  with  that  tiny  body  of  his,  how  he  can  mount  so 
high  and  how  he  can  with  that  delicate  organization  in 
his  throat  produce  such  a  flood  of  melody.  And  so  the 
owls  are  always  doubting  about  the  skylark.  They 
wonder  whether  Shakespeare  was  really  Shakespeare, 
and  they  cannot  understand  how  he  could  do  it.  And 
many  a  time  this  man  has  mounted  into  the  heavens 
and  we  have  heard  his  songs,  as  we  have  heard  those  of 
the  skylark  coming  down  on  a  pleasant  afternoon  in 
July  over  the  English  meadows.  And  in  this  later 
world  of  ours,  with  its  increasing  cares  and  increasing 
toils,  who  is  so  important  to  us  or  whom  shall  we  love 
more  than  we  love  the  man  who  sings  the  song  of  the 
blue  sky,  the  stretch  of  the  blue  sky,  and  the  infinity  of 
the  God  who  made  it  all  ? 


SIR  CASPAR  PUEDON  CLARKE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOK,  FEBKUABY  23,  1905 


Lotos  Club  is  well  known  in  Europe.  To  dine 
_  with  the  Lotos  Club  :  those  are  very  simple  words, 
but  they  brought  up  to  my  mind  visions  and  memories 
of  romance  and  realities,  of  the  Lotophagi  in  their 
dreamy  country,  and  several  months  which  I  spent, 
years  ago,  in  delightful  fashion  in  a  house-boat  on  the 
lakes  of  far  Kashmir;  the  memory  of  eating  the  lotos- 
leaves  ;  the  scenes  of  fair  Kashmir,  and  the  recollection 
of  the  drives  and  the  days  spent  in  the  simple  life. 

An  American  friend,  an  artist  resident  in  London, 
who  was  one  of  a  party  that  I  can  never  forget,  coming 
in  to  congratulate  me,  I  took  advantage  of  the  oppor 
tunity  to  ask  respecting  the  special  subject  which  the 
Lotos  Club  regarded  as  a  qualification  for  membership, 
and  upon  listening  to  a  few  general  remarks  I  suggested 
that  the  Lotos  Club  was  probably  an  equivalent  to  the 
Savage  Club  in  London,  but  my  friend  remarked  that  it 
was  so,  with  a  difference.  There  is  a  very  great  differ 
ence.  From  the  entrance-hall  of  the  Savage  Club,  and 
through  all  the  rooms,  hang  tomahawks,  and  they  try  to 
impress  upon  you  that  they  are  savages.  The  presi 
dent's  club  is  an  enormous  bulb  with  little  balls  or  knobs 
on  it,  a  mace,  I  believe  it  is,  formerly  belonging  to  some 
chief  in  West  Africa.  The  entire  house  is  decorated 

239 


240  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

with,  native  weapons  from  many  lands.  It  is  the  only 
club  that  won't  admit  millionaires  at  any  price.  And 
that  formidable  mace  that  the  president  uses  is  gener 
ally  pounded  on  the  table,  with  the  gruff  remark,  ' '  You 
may  smoke. ' ' 

The  members,  however,  are  savages  only  in  name, 
and  are  otherwise  simply  turtle-doves.  But  the  Lotos 
Club,  with  its  dolce  far  niente  title,  is  not  to  be  taken 
so  lightly  as  its  name  implies;  it  takes  things  very 
seriously,  and  one  had  better  look  out.  Its  members 
live  in  another  atmosphere  from  that  of  London,  and 
although  the  word  " strenuous"  may  be  a  softening 
down  of  the  old  word  ' '  snap, ' '  they  are  still  terribly  in 
earnest,  and  unless  you  can  get  them  to  purr  they  may 
scratch  and  perhaps  bite. 

This  may  be  slander,  and  the  quality  of  the  dove  pos 
sibly  dominates  your  gatherings;  but  I  make  a  frank 
confession  of  the  state  of  mind  in  which  I  came  here, 
with  the  hope  that  the  spirit  of  the  Lotos  Club,  the 
' '  om  mani  padme  hum ' '  of  the  ' '  Light  of  Asia, ' '  will,  at 
least  this  evening,  reign  supreme. 

I  am  not  sure,  sir,  that  I  am  expected  to  say  some 
thing  about  the  museum— the  Metropolitan  Museum. 
Twenty-one  years  ago  I  went  over  it  very  carefully.  I 
don't  recognize  it  now.  It  has  apparently  doubled  in 
size,  and  some  of  the  collections  have  doubled  in  im 
portance,  and  you  have  quite  beaten  me  in  reproduc 
tions  by  means  of  casts.  Several  things  I  failed  to  get 
for  the  South  Kensington,  you  have  managed  to  get 
over  here.  I  am  rather  pleased  in  finding  that  in  one 
or  two  senses  the  museum  will  not  require  much  help 
on  my  part. 


SIR  CASPAR  PURDON  CLARKE      241 

I  don't  think  I  can  say  anything  more  on  the  sub 
ject,  because  there  are  several  present  who  know  so 
much  more  about  the  museum  than  myself.  I  had 
much  rather  listen  to  the  hopes  and  expectations  of 
those  gentlemen  than  to  my  own  fears.  I  can  only  say 
that  I  am  taking  up  the  work  thoroughly  determined 
to  do  my  best  to  merit  all  the  kind  things  said,  and  the 
very  high  expectations  which  you  naturally  have  here. 
I  am  going  back  to  London  in  a  few  days,  taking  back 
with  me  the  memory  of  the  most  gratifying  event 
which  has  occurred  in  my  life. 

It  was  in  India,  though,  that  I  had  the  great  experi 
ence  of  my  life,  after  the  sleepy  days  in  London.  Some 
time  ago  the  home  government  sent  me  to  India 
charged  with  an  important  mission,  and  there  I  met 
with  a  reception  that  would  have  turned  the  heads  of 
some  people.  They  put  me  on  the  back  of  an  elephant, 
and  all  the  people  kotowed  as  we  went  along.  My  ele 
phant  was  a  rogue,  though,  and  I  broke  up  the  proces 
sion  by  letting  him  stop  to  rob  a  greengrocer's  shop, 
and  allowed  him  to  get  his  fill. 


FEEDEEICK  DIELMAN 

(PRESIDENT  OF  THE  NATIONAL  ACADEMY  OF  DESIGN) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  SIR  CASPAR  PURDON  CLARKE, 
FEBRUARY  23,  1905 

IT  is  the  very  basis  of  art  that  it  is  a  bond  which  links 
together  all  humanity.  It  is  a  bond  which  connects 
the  man  of  to-day  with  him  who  lived  ages  before  the 
dawn  of  history.  It  is  a  bond  of  sympathy  between 
him  who  is  a  product  of  the  highest  culture  of  to-day, 
and  that  other  one  who  scratched  and  ornamented  the 
cobble  in  his  unknown  cave,  and  painted  rude  figures 
and  ornaments  upon  the  blade  he  wrought.  It  is  a 
bond  of  sympathy. 

We  of  America  or  Europe  may  be  utterly  incapable 
of  understanding  or  sharing  the  ideas,  ethical  or  re 
ligious,  of  the  nations  of  the  East— say  of  those  who 
occupy  the  Japanese  archipelago.  Their  language,  their 
written  words,  are  sounds  and  songs,  and  are  simply 
unintelligible  to  us,  meaningless;  but  their  painting, 
their  carving,  these  instantaneously  and  powerfully 
strike  a  sympathetic  chord  within  us;  while  their  lan 
guage  is  meaningless  to  us,  their  art  is  eloquent  in 
appealing  to  us.  That  is  because  art  is  one,  it  is  uni 
versal.  It  connects,  as  I  said,  the  man  of  to-day  with 
the  savage,  the  man  who  lived  in  prehistoric  times.  It 
is  a  bond  that  runs  true  and  acts  unmindful  of  condi 
tions  of  time,  race,  or  region. 

242 


FREDERICK  DIELMAN  243 

Now  it  would  be  pedantic  and  out  of  place  to  dwell 
upon  the  particular  characteristic  of  art— its  univer 
sality;  but  it  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  point  out,  as 
you  have  already  pointed  out,  that  we  have  another 
illustration  of  the  fact  of  this  community  of  art,  which 
proves  the  truth  that  it  is  not  the  art  of  this  country, 
of  this  time,  that  of  one  people  or  another,  but  simply 
that  it  is  art.  We  have  an  illustrious  proof  of  this  fact 
in  the  coming  to  us  of  Sir  Purdon  Clarke. 

Our  political  system  differs  somewhat  from  that  of 
Sir  Purdon 's  own  country,  and  differs  greatly  from 
that  of  other  European  countries.  We  could  not  ex 
pect  that  the  statesman,  of  whatever  ability,  of  Eng 
land,  Germany,  or  even  Russia  should  come  to  us  and 
take  the  management  of  our  government.  We  can 
hardly  expect  that  the  eminent  jurists  should  come  to 
us  and  give  us  in  person  the  benefit  of  their  learning 
and  experience.  It  is  rarely,  I  believe,  that  a  foreigner 
takes  charge  of  great  industrial  undertakings  (Scotch 
men  are  hardly  an  exception  unless  caught  very 
young),  but  Sir  Purdon  Clarke  comes  to  us  to  assume 
the  leadership  of  a  great  museum  of  art.  Fully 
equipped  and  qualified,  he  needs  no  sea-change;  all 
that  is  necessary  for  him  to  do  is  to  continue  in  the 
exercise  of  the  high  qualities  of  head  and  heart  which 
he  has  proved  himself  to  be  possessed  of  in  his  native 
England. 

We  may  naturally,  I  think,  congratulate  Sir  Purdon 
that  he  comes  to  a  field  of  art  of  wonderful  amplitude 
in  everything  that  calls  for  a  liberal  spirit  and  unex 
celled  generosity,  and  to  a  welcome  that  will  make  him 
feel  at  once  at  home  and  in  no  sense  a  stranger.  It  is 


244  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

a  most  pleasant  duty  for  me  to  say  a  word  for  the  insti 
tution  which  I  have  the  honor  to  represent,  and  for 
the  members  thereof,  and  to  express  and  extend  a 
welcome  to  him  from  them,  individually  and  collec 
tively;  and  I  think  I  may  venture  also  to  extend  that 
welcome  from  every  artist  in  New  York  City,  at  least. 
And  this  I  now  take  upon  myself  to  do  because,  after 
all,  they  are  all,  in  one  way  or  another,  identified  with 
that  old  institution,  the  National  Academy  of  Design. 
Robert  R.  Livingston  was  one  of  those  who  brought 
about  the  first  exhibition  of  American  art.  Trumbull 
and  Holland,  among  others,  were  important  men  in 
that  period.  It  was  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  nine 
teenth  century  that  the  first  art  society  was  organized 
in  this  country  and  in  this  city,  and  that  society  was 
the  nucleus  of  the  National  Academy  of  Design. 


WILLIAM  T.  EVANS 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  SIR  CASPAR  PURDON  CLARKE, 
FEBRUARY  23,  1905 

IN  honoring  the  newly  appointed  director  of  the 
Metropolitan  Museum,  the  Lotos  Club  does  honor 
to  itself ;  and  in  behalf  of  the  art  interests  of  the  club, 
it  is  my  great  pleasure  and  privilege  to  extend  to  Sir 
Purdon  a  most  hearty  and  affectionate  greeting. 

The  Lotos  Club,  in  addition  to  following  the  simple 
life,  has  consistently  stood  for  the  best  in  art,  litera 
ture,  and  science.  Credit  is  due  to  President  Law 
rence,  upon  whose  initiative  was  established  the  Lotos 
Club  Fund  for  the  Encouragement  of  American 
Art.  By  the  subscriptions  of  members  we  annually 
add  to  our  collection  one  or  more  representative  Ameri 
can  paintings.  The  Lotos  Club  extends  further  prac 
tical  encouragement  by  admitting  meritorious  American 
artists  to  life  membership,  taking  from  them,  instead 
of  money,  a  picture  approved  by  the  Art  Committee, 
so  that  the  Lotos  to-day  possesses  the  best  collection  of 
American  paintings  and  has  the  largest  membership 
of  eminent  artists  of  any  club  in  the  country. 

It  is  therefore  highly  appropriate  that  we  should 
extend  a  cordial  and  friendly  welcome  to  the  distin 
guished  guest  of  the  evening. 

We  can  readily  understand  that  the  important  posi- 
245 


246  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

tion  which  Sir  Purdon  has  occupied  in  the  South 
Kensington  Museum  was  attained  only  through  stu 
dious  application  and  sheer  merit.  He  has  acquired 
not  only  extended  knowledge  in  all  the  various 
branches  of  art,  but  he  has  shown  administrative  ca 
pacity  and  tact  which  will  stand  him  in  good  stead  in 
the  high  office  to  which  he  has  dedicated  himself.  I  am 
very  glad  to  hear  from  Sir  Purdon  that  in  many  de 
partments  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of  Art  will  com 
pare  more  than  favorably  with  any  similar  institution 
in  the  world. 

Public  museums  are  not  created  overnight.  The 
great  English  National  Gallery  in  London  was  started 
in  1824  by  the  purchase  of  thirty-eight  pictures  from 
the  Angerstein  collection,  and  it  was  not  opened  to  the 
public  until  fourteen  years  later.  The  collection  now 
contains  several  thousand  examples.  Many  of  us  re 
member  the  modest  beginning  of  the  Metropolitan  Mu 
seum  in  an  old  private  house  on  Fourteenth  Street,  and 
we  have  seen  it  grow  with  the  growth  of  the  metropolis. 
There  are  still  many  rich  treasures  in  store  for  it.  The 
growth  of  aesthetic  taste  in  this  country  has  been  re 
markable.  A  little  more  than  twenty  years  ago  there 
was  held  the  first  art  exhibition  given  in  the  South— 
at  Louisville  in  1883;  since  then  there  have  been  im 
portant  exhibitions  in  New  Orleans,  Atlanta,  Nashville, 
and  Charleston.  Art  museums  are  now  to  be  found  in 
almost  every  leading  city  in  the  country. 

There  was  held  a  few  weeks  ago  in  this  city  what  was 
called  the  Comparative  Exhibition.  There  were  shown 
two  hundred  paintings,  equally  divided  between  Ameri 
can  and  foreign  works— French,  English,  and  Dutch. 


WILLIAM  T.  EVANS  247 

The  committee  in  charge  secured  the  best  obtainable 
examples.  In  order  to  import  valuable  works  from 
Canada  in  bond,  the  Society  of  Art  Collectors  was  in 
corporated.  The  success  of  that  exhibition  was  epoch- 
making,  and  I  think  I  am  warranted  in  saying  that  the 
works  of  the  American  artists  fully  held  their  own  by 
comparison.  The  good  effect  upon  American  art  was 
immediate  and,  I  believe,  far-reaching. 

In  landscapes  particularly  the  American  works  were 
notably  impressive.  Not  only  were  the  great  deceased 
painters,  Martin,  Wyant,  and  Inness,  well  represented, 
but  the  living  American  painters  of  landscape  gave  a 
good  account  of  themselves.  Nor  was  the  American 
half  of  the  exhibition  confined  to  landscapes :  Winslow 
Homer  was  splendidly  represented  by  his  powerful 
marines,  and  many  of  our  figure-painters  contributed 
to  the  success  of  the  exhibition,  which  included  such 
names  as  William  Morris  Hunt,  George  Fuller,  George 
de  Forest  Brush,  Wyatt  Eaton,  Thomas  W.  Dewing,  J. 
Alden  Weir,  B.  R.  Fitz,  and  others. 

I  have  mentioned  the  name  of  that  poet-painter, 
Homer  D.  Martin.  During  his  lifetime  he  was  appre 
ciated  by  a  limited  circle  of  admirers.  There  is  a  story 
told  of  his  early  life  in  Albany  which  illustrates  his 
struggle  for  existence.  He  was  called  upon  one  day  by 
the  famous  sculptor,  E.  D.  Palmer.  He  found  Martin's 
studio  very  uncomfortable,  and  Martin  himself  almost 
famished  with  cold.  Palmer  asked  him  why  he  did  not 
get  some  coal,  and  Martin  acknowledged  that  he  had 
no  money.  Thereupon  Palmer  gave  him  ten  dollars. 
A  couple  of  weeks  afterward  the  sculptor  called  at 
Martin 's  studio  and  found  the  same  conditions  existing. 


248  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Palmer  said  to  the  painter:  "Where  is  that  coal  I  gave 
you  the  ten  dollars  to  buy?"  "Oh,"  replied  Martin, 
* '  I  bought  a  couple  of  pails  of  coal,  and  for  the  rest  of 
the  money  I  got  a  box  of  cigars. ' ' 

It  is  well  known  that  Sir  Purdon  was,  before  he  be 
came  a  museum  director,  a  practising  architect,  and  I 
know  he  will  acknowledge  we  have  made  some  advance 
in  our  architecture  during  the  past  decade  or  two.  This 
reminds  me  of  another  bright  saying  of  Martin.  With 
a  friend  he  was  passing  the  General  Post-office,  which, 
by  the  way,  ought  never  to  have  encroached  upon  the 
City  Hall  Park,  and  remarked  that  "poor  Mullett 
could  never  understand  the  dignity  of  a  dead  wall. ' ' 

The  new  Fifth  Avenue  facade  of  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  is  a  great  improvement  on  the  older  portions 
of  the  building.  It  is  a  far  cry  from  the  Mullett  Post- 
office  to  the  new  Custom-house. 

Art  is  the  only  lasting  record  of  a  nation 's  civiliza 
tion,  or,  as  Austin  Dobson  has  expressed  it  : 

All  passes ;  Art,  alone 
Enduring,  stays  to  us. 
The  bust  outlasts  the  throne; 
The  coin,  Tiberius. 


WHITELAW  EEID 

(AMBASSADOR  TO  GREAT  BRITAIN) 
AT  THE  DINNEK  IN  HIS  HONOB,  MAY  18,  1905 

MORE  than  ever  you  convince  me  that  it  is  all  a 
mistake.  We  used  to  talk  about  the  Lotos  Club 
as  a  land  where  it  seemed  always  afternoon.  But  it  is 
nothing  of  the  kind.  On  the  contrary,  it  seems  always 
in  the  morning,  quite  early  in  the  morning,  the  morning 
of  life,  of  cheer,  of  hope,  the  morning  of  ardent  beliefs 
and  of  hearty  appreciations. 

I  am  not  vain  enough  to  fancy  that  these  smiling 
faces,  these  voices  of  good  will,  this  generous  warmth  of 
recognition,  are  the  just  due  of  any  merits  of  mine.  I 
know  well  how  they  come  from  the  vivid  memories  and 
the  red  blood  of  a  public-spirited  club  that  has  learned 
to  carry  the  freshness  of  its  morning  friendships 
throughout  its  full  and  successful  day. 

You  yourself,  Mr.  President,  illustrate  perfectly  how 
long  this  morning  lasts.  In  spite  of  all  the  years  that 
you  have  held  this  post,  the  Lotos  charm  keeps  for  you 
still  the  air  and  the  quick  sympathy  of  the  young  law 
yer  who  succeeded  to  my  place  and  bettered  my  work 
away  back  in  the  '80  's  or  early  '90  's. 

What  memories  this  very  generous  and  ever  fresh 
greeting  of  the  Lotos  evokes !  How  often  have  I  stood 
here  extending  in  your  name  the  first  welcome  to  newly 
arriving  guests  from  the  Old  Home ! 

249 


250  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

You  will  recall  the  proud  pleasure  we  all  took  in 
being  the  first  to  receive  on  these  shores  the  author  of 
"The  Three  Fishers "  and  "Alton  Locke "  and  "West 
ward  Ho ! ' '  Preacher,  novelist,  and  poet,  and  fascinat 
ing  alike  in  each  relation,  Canon  Kingsley's  stay  was 
too  short  for  us,  though  unhappily  too  long  for  him,  and 
but  a  year  or  two  afterward  two  nations  mourned  his 


Then  came,  but  a  few  months  later,  the  most  bril 
liant  word-painter  the  study  of  history  has  given  to 
English  literature  in  half  a  century,  James  Anthony 
Froude,  and  you  bade  me  welcome  him  to  your  board. 

The  next  year  brought  another  Englishman,  Wilkie 
Collins,  whom  you  took  to  your  hearts  from  the  mo 
ment  when,  in  reply  to  some  playful  reference  of  mine, 
he  gallantly  avowed  to  you  that  his  sole  mission  in  life 
was  to  produce  what  heavy  people  called  light  litera 
ture.  And  then  came  another,  a  statesman  and  poet 
whom  we  still  like  to  call  by  the  name  under  which 
we  had  learned  to  admire  his  work,  Richard  Monckton 
Milnes.  Some  of  you  will  remember  how  the  proud 
parent  could  scarcely  keep  back  his  tears  when  Bayard 
Taylor  spoke  admiringly  at  your  table  of  the  manly, 
broad-shouldered  young  fellow  he  had  seen  at  the  home 
of  the  guest  of  the  evening,  a  young  fellow  who  would 
some  day  be  Lord  Houghton  himself. 

How  time  flies!  That  broad-shouldered  youth  who 
had  caught  our  traveler-poet's  fancy,  and  whose  name 
the  Lotos  members  applauded  because  they  saw  it 
pleased  his  father,  has  since  been  Lord  Lieutenant  of 
Ireland,  and  is  now  known  as  the  Earl  of  Crewe. 

But  why  should  I  prolong  these  reminiscences?    We 


WHITELAW  REID  251 

could  never  recount  them  all.  Matthew  Arnold,  that 
rarest  Greek  in  the  later  English  world  of  letters;  Sir 
Edwin  Arnold  and  Sir  Henry  M.  Stanley,  Edmund 
Yates  and  George  Augustus  Sala  and  dear  old  Tom 
Hughes  (whom  you  never  could  learn  to  call  anything 
but  Tom  Brown),  and  Sir  Henry  Irving  belong  to  the 
earlier  days.  William  S.  Gilbert  and  Sir  Arthur  Sul 
livan  came  while  "Pinafore"  and  the  "Pirates  of 
Penzance ' '  were  young.  In  later  years  the  list  of  Eng 
lishmen  whom  you  have  made  your  guests  is  far  too 
long  for  the  briefest  recital. 

And  now  you  are  sending  me  off  with  your  God 
speed  to  the  other  side,  as  more  than  once  you  have 
sent  me  before  and  tolerantly  welcomed  me  back.  If 
but  a  tithe  of  your  English  guests  remember  me  for 
your  sake,  I  shall  find  myself  surrounded  from  the  first 
by  a  host  of  brilliant  friends. 

Increasing  cares  and  duties  have  of  late  made  me  a 
very  unworthy  member  of  this  club.  I  am  almost 
ashamed  to  recall  the  fact  that  the  last  time  I  stood 
before  you  was  to  thank  you  for  the  welcome  you  gave 
me  on  my  return  from  a  post  whence  my  colleagues 
and  myself  had  brought  home  peace,  with  national  ex 
pansion.  Whatever  may  await  me  in  the  future,  am 
bition  can  scarcely  hold  out  a  more  grateful  attainment 
than  the  approval  then  given  here  by  those  who  have 
known  me  longest  and  best,  and  given  next  by  the 
country  we  tried  to  serve. 

May  I  add,  with  reference  to  the  new  appointment 
whose  duties  I  am  now  about  to  undertake,  that  by  far 
the  most  gratifying  thing  about  it  is  the  way  it  has 
been  received.  We  have  been  living  in  a  strenuous  time. 


252  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

No  man  in  this  great  metropolis  and  in  my  place  could 
well  escape  an  active  part  in  the  incessant  controversies 
and  turmoil  of  the  last  third  of  a  century;  and  my 
critics,  I  believe,  have  generally  agreed  that  I  was  apt 
to  assume,  at  any  rate,  my  full  share  of  them.  After 
such  a  life  to  have  this  appointment  made  by  the  Presi 
dent  of  my  country,  without  the  filing  of  a  single 
recommendation,  approved  by  the  Senate  without  a 
dissenting  voice,  and  received  by  the  press  and  the 
public  with  such  apparently  general  cordiality,  fills 
me  with  a  sobering  sense  of  responsibility  beyond  any 
thing  I  have  ever  felt  before,  and  with  earnest  aspira 
tions  that  all  this  generous  confidence  may  prove  in  the 
end  not  to  have  been  wholly  misplaced. 

Let  me  take  the  opportunity  before  this  club,  so 
largely  made  up  of  members  of  the  press  and  others 
of  literary  and  artistic  pursuits,  to  say  further  that  the 
thing  that  has  touched  me  most  of  all  is  the  unbroken 
good  will  expressed  with  such  heartiness  and  without 
distinction  of  party  by  my  colleagues  in  the  press  of 
the  city  and  State  of  New  York,  among  whom  I  have 
lived  and  worked  and  done  my  share  of  fighting  for 
more  than  a  generation. 

May  I  presume  a  little  on  this  ?  I  should  like  to  take 
the  liberty  of  pointing  out  that  other  work  may  now 
bring  different  duties.  No  one,  I  trust,  will  ever  find 
me  unmindful  of  the  rights  and  the  just  claims  of  the 
profession  I  honor  most  in  the  world  and  am  the  proud 
est  to  have  served.  No  man  can  have  spent  his  life  in 
newspaper  work  without  being  led  by  all  his  habits  and 
instincts  to  a  warm  sympathy  with  newspaper  workers, 
and  a  readiness  to  facilitate  their  efforts.  And  yet  may 


WHITELAW  REID  253 

I  hint  to  the  general  manager  of  our  wonderful  Asso 
ciated  Press  service,  whose  wary  eye  I  see  upon  me,  and 
to  others,  in  less  responsible  places,  who  may  have 
chanced  to  think  of  the  matter  hitherto  with  less  scru 
pulous  care  than  Mr.  Stone  himself  and  his  representa 
tives  in  the  great  capitals  always  show,  that  there  may 
—in  fact,  there  must— come  a  time  when  it  will  be  my 
duty  to  report  first  and  exclusively  to  the  government, 
instead  of  reporting  to  the  newspapers  ? 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  an  open  course  is  the  best; 
that  a  free  people  wish  to  know  from  day  to  day  what  is 
being  done  in  their  name  and  by  their  authority;  that 
our  government  is  not  adapted  to  secrecy  and  does  not 
like  to  make  a  mystery  of  its  movements  and  its  policy. 

But  the  Japanese  have  been  showing,  on  a  great 
scale,  that  there  is  a  duty  in  war  which  under  any 
sagacious  government  must  come  before  the  duty  of 
furnishing  bulletins  for  the  daily  press.  Diplomacy,  if 
it  is  to  be  sagacious  or  successful,  even  the  diplomacy 
of  a  republic,  must  be  somewhat  in  the  same  class. 
Neither  can  always  be  advantageously  conducted  coram 
publico. 

There  is  another  phase  of  our  newspaper  activities 
that  merits  more  serious  consideration  from  all  of  us 
than  we  generally  give  it.  The  free  press  largely  rules 
a  free  country.  It  may  make  peace  or  war ;  it  has  done 
both.  But  it  is  quite  capable  of  fomenting  very  grave 
difficulties  which  it  never  desired,  or  intended,  or  even 
thought  of.  In  our  great  distances  and  isolation  be 
tween  two  oceans,  and  general  feeling  of  remoteness 
and  elbow-room  and  independence,  it  has  sometimes 
been  apt  in  moments  of  excitement  to  measure  its 


254  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

words  as  little  in  dealing  with  a  high-spirited  and  sen 
sitive  nation  as  with  a  candidate  for  the  office  of  town 
constable  or  for  the  Board  of  Aldermen.  Is  it  not  time 
for  the  press,  when  it  exercises  its  power,  to  recognize 
also  the  obligations  of  rule,  consideration,  moderation, 
and  a  scrupulous  regard  both  for  the  rights  and  the 
susceptibilities  of  others? 

We  have  ourselves  resented  at  times  with  the  utmost 
asperity  the  slightest  foreign  interference  in  our  own 
domestic  discussions.  More  than  once  those  of  us  of 
maturer  years  have  seen  this  country  lashed  into  a  fury 
almost  belligerent,  merely  by  the  critical  or  carping 
references  in  foreign  newspapers.  It  might  be  well 
now,  in  some  quiet  hour,  to  consider  the  other  side,  and 
reflect  how  they  may  feel  over  our  free-spoken  com 
ments  on  their  affairs.  Have  we  not,  in  fact,  taken 
sides,  and  led  our  people  to  take  sides,  habitually  and 
even  vehemently,  on  almost  every  foreign  question  that 
comes  to  our  notice?  Would  it  not  comport  better 
sometimes  with  our  position  now  if  we  were  a  little  less 
dogmatic  in  laying  down  the  duty  of  this  or  that  nation 
in  its  own  domestic  affairs,  and  a  little  less  partisan  in 
our  view  of  the  unhappy  conflicts  between  contending 
nations?  Do  not  misunderstand  me,  I  am  arraigning 
no  one,  and  making  no  criticism  of  others  which  I  do 
not  take  to  myself  also.  But  has  not  the  time  come,  in 
the  development  of  this  country  and  in  the  increased 
intimacy  and  importance  of  its  relations  to  other  coun 
tries,  when  we  may  advantageously  practise  a  little 
more  reserve  in  commenting  upon  other  people's  affairs, 
a  little  more  impartiality  between  countries  at  war,  and 
a  friendlier  tone  to  each  when  we  are  on  good  terms 


WHITELAW  REID  255 

with  both,  and  have  every  interest  to  remain  so  ?  What 
is  good  policy  for  individuals  in  the  disagreements  of 
their  neighbors  might  sometimes  in  these  international 
cases  be  pretty  good  policy  for  newspapers,  too,  and 
for  the  people  at  large,  an  attitude  of  friendly  neutral 
ity,  while  meantime  diligently  minding  our  own  busi 
ness,  and  letting  that  of  other  people  alone. 

Meanwhile,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  may  I 
hope  to  see  you  from  time  to  time  in  London  ?  You  will 
know  where  to  find  me,  and  you  will  not  need  my 
assurance  that  I  shall  try  to  make  you  as  welcome  as 
you  have  made  me.  The  great  kindness  you  extend 
now,  and  the  confidence  you  bestow,  are  purely  on 
credit.  I  shall  have  deserved  it  all  only  if,  while  taking 
the  greatest  care  for  our  own  interests,  I  can  still  help 
maintain  in  full  force  that  good  understanding  between 
ourselves  and  Great  Britain  which  has  grown  clearer 
and  stronger  at  each  step  of  our  advance,  in  the  paths 
that  have  been  steadily  broadening  before  us  every 
year  and  month  since  our  peace  with  Spain. 


EDMUND  CLAEENCE  STEDMAN 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  WHITELAW  EEID,  MAY  18,  1905 

I  REMEMBER  well  my  disappointment  when  I  sat 
with  that  brilliant  friend  of  mine,  William  Walter 
Phelps,  when  I  knew  that  Phelps  would  not  be  the 
premier  of  this  country  for  the  next  four  years, 
and  that  my  friend  Reid  would  not  go  at  that  time  to 
the  Court  of  St.  James.  But  I  had  great  confidence  in 
my  friends ;  I  knew  of  Reid 's  tenacity,  and  I  knew  that 
if  he  deserved  a  thing  he  would  have  it.  Since  that 
time  he  has  earned  and  deserved  the  right  to  go  to  the 
Court  of  St.  James.  But  I  know  why  he  did  not  go  at 
that  time.  Fate  orders  these  things  better  than  we  do 
ourselves.  Fortune  had  him  in  training,  and  she  wished 
him  to  be  Minister  first  at  the  politest  court  in  the 
world,  and  brush  up  again  a  few  of  those  graces  for 
which  he  is  noted.  She  wished  him  to  be  twice  a  peace 
commissioner,  and  an  accomplished  orator,  and  display 
his  orations  in  a  volume  which  is  perhaps  superior  to 
any  volume  of  patriotic  and  statesmanlike  addresses  of 
modern  times. 

And  then,  in  the  ripeness  of  his  years  and  the  ma 
turity  of  his  powers,  he  goes  abroad  under  the  happiest 
circumstances.  If  I  have  been  disappointed  this  time, 
it  has  been  owing  to  the  reluctance  of  other  consuls  to 
return  to  this  country.  It  has  been  six  weeks  since  the 

256 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN  257 

date  I  expected  to  repair  to  the  Lotos  Club,  and  I  would 
just  like  to  talk  a  little  as  an  old  friend  of  Reid's.  I  do 
not  know  that  any  one  here  could  have  known  Mr. 
Reid,  either  as  a  friend  or  a  journalist,  earlier  than  I, 
because  we  both  lay  under  the  same  blanket  in  1861  and 
1862,  in  the  early  part  of  the  Civil  War,  when  Mr. 
Reid  came  to  Washington  as  the  war  correspondent  of 
the  Cincinnati  Gazette,  and  I  was  a  correspondent  from 
New  York.  We  were  both  early  in  the  field.  That  was 
a  very  remarkable  time  for  bringing  together  men  as 
hopeful  and  patriotic  as  the  youngest  here,  the  boy 
senator  from  New  York,  at  my  right. 

In  1861,  about  the  time  I  met  Whitelaw  Reid,  I  met 
the  handsome,  modest,  and  delicate,  yet  virile  John 
Hay;  and  I  met  another  young  man  at  the  time  who 
was  perhaps  an  older  friend  of  Mr.  Reid  than  myself, 
William  Dean  Howells.  Howells,  Hay,  Reid,  and  I, 
we  ran  together  like  drops  of  water,  although  I  was 
very  short  and  Reid  was  very  tall,  and  Howells  was 
going  to  Venice,  and  I  was  staying  here  to  do  the  work. 
We  became,  perhaps,  not  a  big  four,  but  still  a  very 
hopeful  four,  and  a  very  generous  four  as  far  as  one 
another  were  concerned.  I  do  not  believe  that  any  one 
had  a  thought  that  was  not  kindly  to  the  others ;  and  it 
was  always  the  same,  and  this  has  continued  through 
forty-five  years.  We  were  all  in  humble  positions  then ; 
probably  Hay  had  the  most  brilliant  prospects,  as  he 
was  in  communion  with  the  immortal  Lincoln.  Yes,  we 
were  in  humble  positions,  when  I  think  of  the  salary 
that  Reid  had.  We  had  about  twenty-five  or  thirty 
dollars  apiece  to  write  the  report  of  the  battle  of  Gettys 
burg.  To  think  of  the  modern  war  correspondents  re- 


258  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

porting  what  would  have  been  deemed  a  mere  skirmish 
then,  with  steam-yachts  and  cavalry  brigades  to  attend 
them ;  and  for  them  to  think  they  know  anything  about 
war  or  about  journalism ;  it  makes  me  very  tired ! 

But  I  did  n't  intend  to  go  off  on  that  tack;  what  I 
wanted  to  say  was  this.  It  has  been  said  that  life  is  a 
dream,  but  it  is  never  more  a  dream  than  when  you  look 
back  over  a  man's  life  for  nearly  half  a  century.  Every 
one  here  has  read  the  finest  and  most  Homeric  book  in 
the  French  tongue,  "The  Three  Musketeers,"  and  fol 
lowed  the  fortunes  of  Athos,  Porthos,  Aramis,  and  D  'Ar- 
tagnan.  I  remember,  about  the  time  of  the  war,  being 
hard  up,  and  helping  to  translate  "Les  Miserables"  as 
it  came  out,  number  by  number,  and  about  that  time  I 
first  read  Dumas.  I  won't  attempt  to  describe  Porthos 
—there  never  was  anybody  exactly  like  Porthos ;  but  I 
watched  the  course  of  the  others— Aramis,  for  instance. 
He  always  had  a  fight  on,  or  a  love-affair,  and  finally 
became  general-in-chief  of  the  order  of  the  Jesuits,  and 
went  back  to  France  as  ambassador  to  the  most  power 
ful  court  in  Europe.  D'Artagnan  received  his  sword 
on  the  battle-field  and  became  grand  marshal,  and  so 
on.  And  so  I  have  watched  the  course  of  Hay,  Howells, 
and  Reid.  Howells'  pen  was  his  sword,  and  he  has 
been  absolutely  loyal  to  it,  and  has  been  perhaps  the 
most  purely  a  man  of  letters  of  us  all,  and  done  more, 
perhaps,  than  any  other  man  for  the  literature  of 
America.  I  expected  to  see  Howells  here  to-night.  I 
remember  once  that  Mr.  Reid,  in  introducing  Howells 
to  a  great  crowd  of  multimillionaires,  alluded  to  him  as 
"the  parlor  anarchist" ;  Stedman,  on  his  left,  was  "the 
amateur  socialist."  I  plead  guilty  to  "the  amateur 


EDMUND  CLARENCE  STEDMAN  259 

socialist/ '  and  Ho  wells'  fine  humanitarianism  is  well 
known  to  us  all.  We  never,  either  of  us,  have  requested 
to  be  ministers  or  ambassadors,  but  we  have  been  good 
Republicans  most  of  our  lives.  Howells  did  have  a 
consulate,  but  that  was  before  he  was  found  out. 

But  I  have  hopes  now,  if  I  live  until  Mr.  Reid's  term 
is  ready  for  renewal.  I  observe  that  the  administration 
is  veering  around  to  Howells '  point  of  view,  and  mine ; 
and  I  should  not  be  at  all  surprised  if  we  should  find 
ourselves  in  sympathy  not  only  with  the  administra 
tion,  but  with  the  Tribune  and  with  the  ambassador  to 
England,  four  years  from  now. 


ERNEST  M.  STIRES 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  WHITELAW  EEID,  MAY  18,  1905 

THIS  is  a  great  occasion,  and  in  a  great  and  noble 
way  has  the  Lotos  Club  met  it ;  and  I  am  disposed 
to  agree  with  what  has  just  been  stated  by  the  junior 
senator  from  New  York,  that  when  the  President  and 
others  in  authority  wanted  a  really  good  man  for  a 
really  important  place,  they  came  to  the  Lotos-  Club. 
And  therefore  it  is  quite  proper  that  I  should  not  only 
advise  you,  but  also  your  member,  our  ambassador  to 
England,  to  take  good  care  of  his  health. 

I  am  reminded  of  a  message  which  John  L.  Sullivan 
is  said  to  have  sent,  after  the  death  of  Edwin  Booth. 
He  said :  ' '  I  am  exceedingly  sorry  to  hear  of  it ;  there 
are  darn  few  of  us  left. ' ' 

And  while  congratulations  are  evidently  due,  and 
doubtless  many  are  received  by  Mr.  Reid,  and  also  evi 
dently  due  to  our  country  and  to  England,  I  venture  to 
congratulate  most  of  all  to-night  that  distinguished 
guild  and  profession  of  which  he  has  been  such  an 
eminent  member  for  so  many  years. 

The  importance  of  the  profession  of  journalism  has 
been  suggested  here  to-night.  It  is  one  that  has  per 
haps  more  power  than  the  guild  of  diplomatists  in  mak 
ing  war  and  peace.  I  have  been  told  that  it  has 
accomplished  both,  again  and  again.  The  necessity  for 

260 


ERNEST  M.   STIRES  261 

high  ideals,  for  truthfulness  and  straightforwardnessy 
for  absolute  honesty  and  devotion  to  the  highest  stan 
dards,  is  so  evident  as  to  need  no  argument ;  and  all  these 
things  are  most  brilliantly  exemplified  and  have  been 
again  and  again  most  justly  recognized  and  rewarded 
in  the  man  whom  we  seek  to  honor  to-night.  And  so  I 
congratulate,  gentlemen,  the  great  profession  of  jour 
nalism,  and  I  beg  to  advise  those  who  cannot  hear  what 
I  say — the  young  newspaper  men  all  over  the  country 
—to  remember  the  early  beginnings  of  this  man,  his 
devotion,  the  privations  which  he  endured,  his  faithful 
ness  in  little  things  and  his  equal  faithfulness  in  bigger 
things,  and  the  result  which  almost  inevitably  comes  to 
such  character  and  such  faithfulness,  which  is  now 
exemplified  in  the  sending  of  Mr.  Reid  to  the  most  im 
portant  post  outside  of  our  country. 

We  are  sending  to  England  that  for  which  she  should 
be  grateful,  a  scholar  rich  in  wide  and  useful  learning, 
a  writer  of  forceful  and  exquisite  English,  a  citizen  of 
the  loftiest  ideals  and  the  purest  patriotism,  a  gentle 
man  of  most  exceptional  cultivation  and  refinement,  a 
man  of  the  purest  character,  of  the  strongest  convic 
tions,  and  of  the  calmest  courage,  a  true  American. 

Mr.  President,  we  have  sent  great  men  to  England 
before  now,  but  it  would  surprise  no  one  in  this  room  to 
hear  a  message  sent  across  the  sea  in  the  near  future: 
' '  You  have  kept  the  best  till  now. '  ' 

There  is  perhaps  a  rule  for  after-dinner  speaking 
which  might  be  applied,  which  was  suggested  by  a  story 
concerning  gastronomy  that  I  recently  heard.  A 
gentleman  sitting  next  another  at  some  public  dinner 
noticed  that  his  neighbor  was  of  large  proportions, 


262  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ample  curves,  and  greatly  enjoyed  his  dinner.  To  him 
he  said,  ''Have  you  any  special  rules  about  eating?" 
Said  he,  "I  have  one,  and  it  is  a  winner.  When  I  sit 
down  I  push  my  chair  back  about  six  inches  from  the 
table,  and  when  I  touch  I  'm  done. ' ' 

If  I  might  venture  to  hope  that,  with  that  anecdote, 
it  at  least  touched,  I  am  done ;  it  only  remains  for  me  to 
wish  with  all  my  heart  a  very  hearty  God-speed  to  our 
new  ambassador  to  England,  and  all  the  members  of 
his  family.  May  every  day  they  spend  in  England  be 
happy,  and  may  they  every  day  be  more  proud  that 
they  are  Americans. 


CLAEK  HO  WELL 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  WHITELAW  REID,  MAY  18,  1905 

A  DMONISHED  as  I  am  by  the  fact  that  it  is  now 
J\.  midnight,  and  that  I  occupy  the  only  avenue  of 
escape  for  a  very  large  portion  of  the  audience,  I  feel 
that  it  would  be  far  more  appropriate  if,  instead  of 
speaking,  I  should  plead  the  excuse  of  the  man  asked  to 
change  a  ten-dollar  bill.  It  was  at  a  railroad  station, 
and  a  man  rushed  up  to  catch  a  train.  The  cashier  at 
the  window  did  n't  have  the  change,  and  he  said  to  the 
man  next  to  him:  "Will  you  change  a  ten-dollar  bill 
for  me?"  "I  thank  you  very  much  for  the  compli 
ment,"  said  he,  "but  I  have  n't  got  it." 

And  so  I  say  I  thank  you  very  much  for  the  compli 
ment  of  asking  me  to  join  in  these  words  to  Mr.  Reid, 
but  the  lateness  of  the  hour  admonishes  me  not  to  make 
my  remarks  more  than  brief.  Permit  me  only  to  say 
that  as  an  American  citizen,  as  a  man  belonging  to  a 
different  party  from  that  in  which  your  guest  has  be 
come  almost  preeminent,  that  I  rejoice  with  you  in  the 
sentiment  unanimously  expressed  by  the  American 
press  and  the  American  people,  that  we  are  to  have  as 
our  representative  at  the  Court  of  St.  James  a  man  so 
worthy  to  bear  that  honor  and  to  represent  this  country, 
regardless  of  party,  press,  or  section.  I  have  heard 
statements  to-night  about ' '  The  Three  Musketeers, ' '  and 

263 


264  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

I  wish  to  say  that  in  many  of  the  elements  there  por 
trayed,  in  the  chivalry,  manhood,  courage,  and  devotion 
of  Whitelaw  Reid,  we  have  indeed  an  ideal  D  'Artagnan. 

I  come  perhaps  further  to  pay  my  tribute  to  Mr. 
Reid  to-night  than  any  man  in  this  house,  with  the  ex 
ception  of  my  good  friend  Mr.  DeYoung,  of  the  Pacific 
Coast.  I  have  been  thrown  into  very  great  intimacy 
with  him  in  the  past  few  years.  My  companionship 
with  him  as  a  member  of  the  board  of  the  Associated 
Press  has  been  exceedingly  friendly  and  cordial,  and 
there  is  not  a  member  of  the  board  who  does  not  view 
with  exceeding  regret  the  fact  that  he  is  leaving  us.  I 
was  about  to  say  that  I  hoped  he  would  come  back,  but 
I  will  not  say  that,  because  I  know  that  his  services 
over  there  will  be  so  magnificently  done  that  it  will  be 
an  honor  to  us  to  have  him  represent  us  there  as  long 
as  he  would  be  willing  to  stay. 

It  is  a  great  pleasure  for  me  to  be  with  you  and  meet 
you,  especially  on  this  occasion.  In  referring  to  the 
story  so  beautifully  told  to-night  by  Mr.  Low,  I  am 
reminded  of  another  similar  incident,  as  bespeaking  the 
greatness  and  glory  of  our  flag.  It  is  the  story  of  a 
naval  review  at  Gibraltar,  where  all  the  nations  of  the 
world  were  represented  with  their  greatest  battle-ships. 
One  after  another,  these  great  ships  passed  in  review. 
A  stranger  stood  by,  in  the  neighborhood  of  an  Ameri 
can  seaman  thoroughly  familiar  with  all  the  different 
ships  and  flags.  The  stranger  was  not,  and  so  he  asked 
the  seaman,  as  follows : 

"What  ship  is  that?"  "It  is  the  ship  of  His  Maj 
esty  the  King."  "And  this  one?"  as  another  giant 
plowed  the  waters.  ' '  That  is  the  ship  of  the  Emperor 


CLARK  HOWELL  265 

of  Germany."  "And  what  is  the  flag  now  flying  on 
the  ship  that  just  passed?"  "That  is  the  flag  of  the 
Czar  of  Russia. "  " And  this ? "  "The  flag  of  the  King 
of  Italy."  "And,"  said  the  seaman,  as  the  next  came 
by,  flying  the  Stars  and  Stripes,  "that  's  my  flag." 

And  so  we  of  the  South,  my  State  and  every  State, 
say,  as  you  go  worthily  to  represent  us,  "You  carry 
with  you  the  glory  of  our  country,  and  you  bear  in 
your  hands  our  flag,  the  flag  of  every  State  in  the 
Union."  No  man,  regardless  of  party,  regardless  of 
section,  can  more  worthily  or  honorably  carry  that  flag 
than  the  distinguished  guest  of  the  evening.  On  you 
the  eyes  of  every  citizen  of  this  country  are  fixed,  and 
you  take  with  you  the  good  will  and  the  God-speed  of 
every  patriotic  American  citizen. 


FEANK  E,  LAWEENCE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE, 
OCTOBER  21,  1905 

AT  our  first  meeting  for  the  season  just  beginning,  I 
Jl\_  congratulate  you  that  so  many  appear  to  have 
survived  the  summer  holidays,  and  that  the  prosperity 
of  the  club  continues  in  so  marked  a  degree. 

We  assemble  to-night  to  pay  tribute  to  a  rare  and 
perfect  product  of  American  genius,  and  to  signalize 
our  admiration  for  a  great  career.  In  this  country  we 
don't  often  elevate  our  greatest  men  to  the  highest 
offices  at  home ;  we  send  them  abroad.  Americans  must 
be  judged  in  other  countries  by  those  who  are  sent  to 
represent  them  there,  and  how  fortunate  it  is  when  to  a 
great  country  we  can  send  a  great  representative ! 

The  United  States  has  been  fortunate  in  its  represen 
tatives  to  Great  Britain.  Motley,  Lowell,  Phelps,  and 
John  Hay,  each  in  their  turn  did  much  to  cultivate  good 
feeling,  and  to  elevate  the  regard  of  the  English  people 
for  the  American  character;  and  when,  to  succeed  all 
these,  President  McKinley  sent  Joseph  H.  Choate  as 
the  American  ambassador  to  the  Court  of  St.  James,  it 
seemed  as  though  a  climax  had  been  reached  which 
could  not  be  surpassed. 

We  knew  Mr.  Choate  as  a  lawyer,  as  an  intellectual 

266 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  267 

giant,  as  the  leader  of  the  American  Bar;  but  he 
dropped  into  the  wiles  of  diplomacy  as  naturally  as 
though  no  such  simple  pastime  as  the  study  and  prac 
tice  of  the  law  had  ever  been  his  daily  portion,  and  as 
though  he  had  known  nothing  but  diplomacy  from  his 
childhood.  It  has  been  said  that  the  Americans  are  a 
nation  of  diplomats,  which  I  suppose  is  another  way  of 
saying  that  we,  as  a  nation,  are  notable  for  our  sim 
plicity  and  candor  and  truthfulness.  In  all  these 
qualities,  and  far  be  it  from  me  to  intimate  that  there 
are  other  and  inconsistent  qualities  which  may  be  useful 
to  the  successful  diplomat,  Mr.  Choate  excels. 

It  is  not  for  me  now,  nor,  indeed,  would  it  be  possible, 
to  recount  in  detail  his  public  services.  The  period  of 
his  residence  in  London,  during  a  long  and  interesting 
and  often  trying  time,  was  a  period  of  one  continuous, 
unbroken,  conspicuous  and  brilliant  service;  and  its 
crowning  glory  was  this,  that  he  brought  England  and 
America  more  closely  together  than  they  ever  had  been 
before;  that  he  entered  so  heartily  into  the  life  of  the 
English  people  as  to  seem  to  become  one  of  themselves, 
while  at  the  same  time  remaining  as  completely  Ameri 
can  as  he  was  before  he  ever  left  the  United  States. 

Leaving  London,  he  carried  with  him  the  affection  of 
the  English  people  to  a  degree  never  before  accorded  to 
one  not  of  their  own  nationality.  Returning  here,  he 
receives  the  plaudits  of  his  countrymen  in  a  degree 
never  exceeded  by  any  American  coming  home  from 
foreign  service.  His  personality  to-day  forms  one  of 
the  strongest  links  which  bind  together  the  two  great 
branches  of  the  English-speaking  people;  and  it  is 
scarcely  too  much  to  say  that  the  affection  of  both  coun- 


268  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

tries  for  him  is  so  great  that  if  any  difference  unhappily 
arose  between  them  which  could  not  be  settled  by  other 
means,  it  might  almost  by  common  consent  be  referred 
to  the  decision  of  Mr.  Choate  as  the  final  arbitrator  be 
tween  the  two  nations. 

Gentlemen  of  the  Lotos  Club,  we  are  greatly  honored 
in  receiving  Mr.  Choate  to-night.  We  are  delighted  to 
see  him  back  here;  we  applaud  his  past  services;  we 
hope  for  him  a  happy  and  glorious  future :  and  I  know 
that  you  will  all  join  very  heartily  with  me  in  drinking 
to  his  health  and  future  prosperity.  Gentlemen,  Mr. 
Joseph  H.  Choate. 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOR,  OCTOBEE  21,  1905 

NOTHING  but  your  cordial  and  genial  greeting 
could  have  brought  me  to  my  feet  after  the  very 
overwhelming  story  that  your  president  has  told  you 
about  me.  I  entirely  failed  to  recognize  myself  in  the 
picture  that  he  was  drawing ;  and  so  far  as  he  was  try 
ing  to  draw  upon  my  services,  he  has  entirely  over 
drawn  his  account.  I  am  afraid  he  has  sacrificed  his 
credit  and  that  of  the  Lotos  Club  with  these  distin 
guished  bankers  who  are  sitting  about  me. 

This  is  not  the  first  time  that  I  have  enjoyed  the 
honors  and  hospitality  of  the  Lotos  Club,  made  up  as  it 
is,  the  most  representative  body  in  the  city  of  New 
York,  and,  I  think,  in  the  United  States,  of  men  of  all 
professions,  of  all  ages,  of  all  nationalities,  and  of  all 
creeds.  I  know  of  no  body  from  whom  such  a  tribute 
as  you  have  paid  me  could  be  more  grateful. 

There  is  one  office  that  I  would  rather  have  than  any 
other  that  comes  within  my  present  view,  and  that  is  to 
be  president  of  the  Lotos  Club. 

As  he  has  shown  to-night,  the  president  of  the  club 
can  say  what  he  pleases,  and  draw  an  inspiriting  pic 
ture  without  the  least  regard  to  the  facts.  He  tells  me 
that  he  has  been  president  of  the  Lotos  Club  for  the 
last  seventeen  years.  I  wonder  whether  the  record  of 

269 


270  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

himself  and  of  the  club  for  that  protracted  period 
would  bear  a  searching  investigation,  such  as  is  now 
going  on.  I  wonder  what  his  emoluments  and  per 
quisites  have  been  during  all  that  period.  I  see  he 
has  got  his  son  and  his  son-in-law  here,  and  I  'd  like 
very  well  to  know  in  what  measure  they  have  shared  in 
his  prosperity. 

But,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  you  could  not 
have  given  me  greater  pleasure  than  to  invite  me  here 
to  receive  your  greeting,  and  to  find  myself  in  such  a 
company  as  surrounds  me  to-night.  To  return  after  a 
long  absence  and  find  myself  once  more  among  my  old 
friends :  here  are  men  on  my  right  and  on  my  left  with 
whom  I  have  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  close  and  intimate 
friendship  for  forty-five  and  forty-seven  years ;  and  all 
through  the  rooms  on  either  side  are  men  whom  for  a 
less  protracted  period  I  have  been  proud  to  call  my 
friends. 

These  judges;  these  lawyers;  these  generals;  these 
admirals;  these  artists;  these  bankers;  these  men  of 
business  and  of  art,  how  could  a  greater  compliment  be 
paid  to  any  man  ?  I  see  Judge  Patterson  here.  He  is 
one  of  my  very  oldest  friends.  I  think  he  is  lying  low 
for  an  opportunity  to  tell  you  some  stories  about  me.  I 
shall  not  have  an  opportunity  to  reply  to  him,  and  so  let 
me  say  in  advance  that  none  of  them  are  true.  He  is 
not  going  to  speak  here  to-night  as  a  judicial  luminary : 
there  he  is  bound  to  adhere  to  the  facts  and  the  law; 
but  he  is  going  to  appear  in  the  guise  of  an  old  and  inti 
mate  friend,  and  he  can  take  any  liberty  he  pleases 
with  him  who  stands  before  him  at  this  moment. 

Well,  I  have  been  away  from  you  for  many  years, 


JOSEPH  H.   CHOATE  271 

and  delightful  as  every  year  and  every  day  that  I  spent 
abroad  was,  loyal  and  devoted  as  the  friends  who  gath 
ered  about  me  there  were,  and  no  man  ever  had  better 
or  more  sincere  friends ;  splendid  as  was  the  hospitality 
which  I  enjoyed  from  the  very  beginning  to  the  end  of 
my  term  of  office,  and  glorious  as  it  was  to  see  how  my 
country  grew  every  day  in  the  esteem  and  regard  of  the 
nation  to  which  I  was  accredited,  and  of  all  the  other 
nations  of  Europe,  I  must  say  that  the  most  delightful 
day  of  all  was  that  on  which  I  found  myself  on  board 
the  Caronia,  bound  for  New  York,  once  more  to  be  at 
home  for  good,  to  rejoin  the  comrades  of  a  lifetime,  and 
to  take  up  my  part  again  in  the  life  and  activities  of 
this  great  city  and  country,  which  absence  had  only 
made  more  dear  to  me. 

It  is  delightful  to  me  to  meet  these  old  friends  after 
seven  years.  As  the  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table 
says :  "  I  find  that  my  contemporaries  are  not  quite  as 
young  as  they  were."  Their  hair  is  more  silvered  or 
more  scarce.  Some  of  them  have  burst  their  waist 
bands,  or  would  have  done  so  if  they  had  not  been  let 
out ;  some  of  them  have  dwindled.  Some,  I  am  sorry  to 
say  on  this  occasion,  have  passed  away;  but  those  who 
remain  and  those  who  are  here  to-night  still  possess  the 
same  warm  and  loyal  hearts  that  I  left  behind  me  when 
I  went  abroad. 

Now,  you  won't  expect  me  on  this  occasion  to  discuss 
the  people  among  whom  I  have  been  for  these  last  six 
years.  I  have  been  appealed  to  on  many  occasions  since 
my  return  to  write  them  up.  I  think  I  could  have  made 
a  very  good  living  by  so  doing,  but  that  hardly  seemed 
to  me  to  be  a  suitable  thing.  It  may  perhaps  be  more 


272  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

to  your  liking,  as  it  certainly  will  be  to  mine,  if  I  tell 
you  of  some  of  the  changes,  the  wonderful  changes, 
which  I  find  have  taken  place  here  at  home  during  my 
absence. 

In  the  first  place,  the  rush  of  life  here  seems  to  have 
grown  much  more  intense  than  it  was  when  I  went 
away.  The  strain  of  nerve  and  mind  and  brain  and 
body  seems  to  have  been  growing  stronger  and  stronger 
every  year.  You  were  going  at  a  tremendous  pace  when 
I  went  away,  but  now,  if  I  can  judge  from  all  I  can  see 
around  me,  you  have  started  upon  the  pace  that  kills. 
How  mind  and  body  and  brain  and  nerve  can  stand  it 
remains  to  be  seen.  It  does  seem  to  me  that  we,  as  a 
people,  would  do  well  to  imitate  a  little  the  repose,  the 
relaxation,  which  prevails  in  older  countries.  Let  me 
tell  you  of  the  differences  between  the  life  of  a  lawyer, 
with  which  I  am  best  acquainted,  in  the  city  of  New 
York  and  in  the  city  of  London. 

Here,  when  I  was  hard  at  work  practising  law,  we, 
judges  and  lawyers,  worked  incessantly  from  the  first 
Monday  of  October  around  to  the  last  Friday  of  June, 
with  no  interval  but  a  few  days  at  Christmas.  But  our 
older  and  wiser  brethren  upon  the  other  side  learned  to 
mingle  pleasure  with  business  a  great  deal  more  than 
we  have  ever  done  here.  The  courts  come  in,  for  in 
stance,  on  the  24th  of  October,  and  the  lawyers  with 
them.  They  sit  for  eight  weeks.  Then  comes  the 
Christmas  holiday  of  two  weeks.  Then  they  come  back 
and  work  for  eight  weeks  more,  until  Easter,  with  an 
other  delightful  interval  of  repose.  Then  they  come 
for  eight  weeks  more  of  labor,  or  until  Whitsuntide,  a 
period  of  rest  and  vacation  which,  I  think,  is  utterly 


JOSEPH  H.   CHOATE  273 

unknown  in  this  or  any  other  State  of  the  Union,  and 
eight  weeks  more  bring  them  to  the  summer  vacation 
of  ten  weeks,  and  complete  the  round  of  the  legal  ser 
vice.  Now,  Judge  Patterson,  what  would  the  members 
of  the  Appellate  Division  say  if  their  time  and  labors 
were  measured  out  in  that  way?  That  is  one  of  the 
questions  I  want  you  to  answer  when  you  come  upon 
your  feet. 

It  has  brought  about  one  thing,  this  tremendous  rush, 
and  that  is  the  splendid  opportunity  for  young  men 
that  exists  in  this  country.  I  think  there  never  was  a 
time  when  the  young  men  of  America  had  such  golden 
opportunities  as  they  have  now.  The  old  men  need 
them  for  their  help  and  support.  When  I  hear  fathers 
and  mothers  complaining  how  hard  it  is  to  find  places 
for  their  sons,  I  wonder  whether  the  fault  is  with  the 
fathers  and  mothers  for  taking  too  much  care  of  them, 
or  with  the  sons  for  relying  too  much  upon  their 
fathers  and  mothers.  I  wonder  did  these  young  men 
sin,  or  their  parents,  that  they  are  born  blind  to  the 
opportunities  that  surround  them.  There  never  was  a 
time  when  the  young  men  of  this  country,  as  distin 
guished  from  all  other  countries,  had  such  splendid 
chances.  There  is  n't  a  business;  there  is  n't  a  profes 
sion;  there  is  n't  a  public  service  that  is  n't  on  the 
lookout  at  every  moment  for  capable  and  willing  young 
men  to  do  the  work  that  is  waiting  to  be  done.  Now 
that,  I  think,  has  been  growing  and  exists  in  a  still  more 
marked  degree  at  this  time  than  ever  before. 

What  else  do  I  see  ?  Why,  the  wonderful  growth  and 
expansion  of  the  city  of  New  York,  of  which  we  are  all 
proud.  Why,  when  I  first  saw  this  city,  it  was  four 


274  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

miles  long,  ending  at  Forty-second  street;  a  city  of 
eight  hundred  thousand  people.  And  now  I  ani  told 
that  it  embraces  a  territory  of  three  hundred  square 
miles,  with  nearly  four  million  people,  all  hard  at  work, 
and  all  laboring  for  their  own  good  and  the  benefit  of 
the  community. 

I  often  hear  New  York  and  London  compared.  Lon 
don,  I  believe,  increases  its  permanent  population  one 
hundred  thousand  a  year;  but  it  will  be  a  very  close 
race  between  New  York  and  London  if  you  take  the 
next  ten  or  twenty  years  into  account. 

Then,  what  else  have  I  seen?  What  else  do  I  find 
here?  I  find  that  we  are  now  citizens  of  a  country 
greater  far  than  ever  it  was  before,  a  country  that  has 
been  gaining  in  the  admiration  and  wholesome  respect, 
and  affection  even,  of  all  the  other  nations  of  the  world. 
Will  you  wonder  that  I  grew  more  and  more  proud  and 
fond  of  my  position  every  day,  when  all  the  people  who 
surrounded  me  were  growing  more  and  more  full  of 
admiration  for  my  country  every  day?  It  was  a  posi 
tive  fact  that  there  was  never  any  cessation  of  the  ad 
vance  through  which  the  United  States  commanded  the 
respect  and  confidence  of  the  world. 

Now,  I  want  to  refer  to  one  man,  no  longer  with  us, 
who  had  a  very  great  share  in  the  promotion  of  the 
good  name  and  fame  and  power  of  this  country,  a  man 
under  whom  I  regarded  it  as  the  greatest  privilege  of 
my  life  to  have  served,  and  to  have  been  instrumental  in 
a  certain  small  degree  in  carrying  out  his  policy  and  his 
instructions.  I  refer,  of  course,  to  Mr.  John  Hay,  once 
a  member  of  the  Lotos  Club,  who  held  the  office  of  secre- 
tarv  of  state  at  the  time  that  I  was  made  ambassador. 


JOSEPH  H.   CHOATE  275 

Mr.  Lowell  said  forty  years  ago  that  it  was  the  mis 
fortune  of  American  biography  that  it  must  needs  he 
more  or  less  provincial.  This  was  true  when  he  wrote 
it.  A  few  great  Americans  had  passed  the  confines  of 
our  territorial  limits  and  had  made  themselves  known 
and  felt  abroad.  Washington  and  Franklin  and  Hamil 
ton  and  Lincoln  were  almost  as  well  known  across  the 
Atlantic  as  they  were  at  home.  But,  as  a  general  rule, 
what  Mr.  Lowell  said  was  literally  true. 

It  is  no  longer  true.  The  man  who  fills  such  an  office 
as  Mr.  Hay  filled,  and  discharges  his  duties  as  he  dis 
charged  them,  stands  upon  a  pedestal  that  commands 
the  attention  of  the  world,  and  his  fame  will  be  known 
to  the  very  limits,  not  of  his  own  country,  but  of  all  the 
other  countries  with  whom  he  had  to  do,  whose  policy 
he  led,  and  who  were  proud  and  glad  to  follow  wherever 
he  led;  and  especially  as  to  what  he  did  in  the  policy 
of  establishing  safety  and  freedom  of  commerce  for 
all  nations  in  the  far  East  and  in  the  preservation  of 
the  integrity  of  China,  in  which  all  were  equally  in 
terested. 

His  is  one  of  the  names  that  will  stand  imperishably, 
as  I  think,  upon  the  annals  of  the  history  of  America, 
of  the  history  of  diplomacy  and  of  the  world.  And  it  is 
an  indication  of  the  closeness  of  sympathy  which  pre 
vails  between  the  great  divisions  of  the  English-speak 
ing  races  that  upon  the  occasion  of  his  death  there  was 
held  in  the  great  cathedral  of  St.  Paul's  in  London  a 
memorial  service  which  they  celebrated  with  an  im- 
pressiveness  that  had  hardly  had  a  precedent  before. 
All  England  mourned  at  his  bier,  and  king,  government, 
and  people  united  in  that  grand  tribute  to  him. 


276  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Well,  then,  as  another  instance  of  the  growth  of  the 
power  and  standing  of  the  United  States,  I  cannot  re 
frain  from  referring  to  the  last  achievement  of  our 
youthful  President  at  "Washington.  With  the  sympathy 
and  the  prestige  of  the  eighty  millions  of  his  fellow- 
citizens  behind  him,  he  commanded  peace  between  the 
two  great  warring  nations  of  the  East.  He  not  only 
brought  them  together,  but  was  extremely  influential  in 
bringing  about  the  terms  upon  which  to  agree.  I  don't 
see  how  one  man  could  have  rendered  greater  service, 
not  to  his  own  country  only,  but  to  the  whole  world, 
than  that  which  President  Roosevelt,  with  the  commen 
dation  and  approval  of  all  nations  and  of  all  men, 
rendered  on  that  occasion. 

Well,  there  is  another  thing  I  think  I  have  observed, 
and  from  an  outside  view  you  sometimes  get  a  better, 
a  little  better  perspective  than  by  being  on  the  ground 
the  whole  time.  And  that  is  the  growth  of  an  instinct 
and  willingness  for  public  service,  the  growth  of  a  real 
and  wholesome  public  spirit  among  the  young  men  of 
America.  Now,  that  is  one  of  the  things  that  we  used 
to  be  lacking  in.  I  can  remember  the  time  when  it  was 
not  thought  desirable  that  young  men  should  give  them 
selves  up  to  politics  and  public  service.  But  now,  all 
over  the  country,  following  one  great  example,  I  think 
you  can  find  that  the  young  men  of  all  parties,  espe 
cially  the  young  men  of  education  and  character  and 
ability,  are  willing  to  give  themselves  up  to  the  service 
of  their  country. 

Now,  if  I  am  right  in  that,  then,  much  as  we  may 
praise  and  honor  the  specific  service  for  which  we  give 
our  President  the  credit,  I  submit  that  his  general  in- 


JOSEPH  H.  CHOATE  277 

fluence  in  this  wholesome  and  important  direction  is 
even  of  greater  value  still. 

No,  gentlemen,  the  longer  I  stayed  away,  the  prouder 
I  became  of  the  land  that  gave  me  birth ;  and  now  that 
I  have  been  here  for  the  last  four  months  and  have  been 
studying,  as  best  I  might,  its  progress  and  its  present 
condition,  I  believe  that  it  occupies  the  most  hopeful 
position  of  all  the  nations  of  the  world. 

But  I  cannot  detain  you  longer.  This  table  is 
full  of  distinguished  men  who  are  eager  and  ardent  to 
be  heard.  I  believe  that  Mr.  Morgan  is  the  only  one  of 
them  that  is  under  a  safe-conduct.  He  has  an  absolute 
safe-conduct.  I  have  undertaken  to  speak  for  him.  All 
of  these  other  gentlemen  are  intense  and  eager  to  make 
themselves  heard,  judges,  lawyers,  literary  men,  sol 
diers,  sailors,  all  ready  to  say  a  word;  and  as  they  are 
all  old  friends  of  mine,  I  don't  wish  them  to  be  disap 
pointed;  I  don't  wish  you  to  be  disappointed. 

If  you  will  only  permit  me  to  say  how  grateful  I  am, 
how  deeply  grateful,  for  the  genial  kindness  and  gen 
erous  friendship  that  has  dictated  this  occasion,  I  will 
take  my  seat,  thanking  you  over  and  over  again  for  the 
cordial  and  genial  hospitality  of  the  Lotos  Club. 


FEANK  E.  LAWEENCE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  HORACE  POETEE, 
NOVEMBEE  18,  1905 

IT  has  seemed  lately  that  an  air  of  diplomacy  has 
hung  about  this  club.  Our  final  dinner  last  season 
was  to  a  departing  ambassador.  Our  first  dinner  this 
season  was  to  an  ambassador  who  had  come  home,  and 
our  present  dinner  is  to  an  ambassador  who  has  both 
departed  and  returned.  It  seems  to  be  your  fate  to  hear 
me  often,  and  you  will  be  grateful  if  I  am  brief.  The 
story  to-night  is  altogether  too  long  for  me  to  attempt 
to  tell.  It  would  be  the  story  of  a  brilliant  young  officer 
in  the  Army  who  attracted  the  notice  and  became  the 
friend  and  the  aide  and  the  chief  of  staff  and  in  a  large 
sense  the  biographer  of  the  great  captain,  Grant.  It 
would  be  the  story  of  one  long  known  to  us  in  this  club, 
and  known  for  many  years  through  many  past  activi 
ties  in  this  metropolis.  It  would  be  the  story  of  a  man 
whom  you  remember  eight  or  nine  years  ago  heading 
the  countless  thousands  of  men  who  marched  in  the 
sound-money  parade  in  defense  of  the  business  honor 
and  integrity  of  the  United  States.  It  would  be  the 
story  of  one  who  has  served  his  country  with  great  dis 
tinction  for  many  years  abroad,  and,  as  elsewhere  has 
been  said  of  him,  made  Paris  for  years  the  center  of  the 
diplomatic  world.  It  would  be  the  story  of  a  man  who, 

278 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  279 

after  indefatigable  research,  restored  to  America  the 
mortal  remains  of  the  founder  and  the  father  of  the 
American  Navy,  thus  proving  that  republics  are  not 
forgetful.  But,  above  all,  it  would  be  the  story  of 
our  young  friend,  our  young  member  of  many  years, 
a  Bohemian  of  the  Bohemians,  who,  after  receiving  the 
greatest  distinctions  and  the  highest  decorations  that 
either  the  Congress  of  the  United  States  or  the  Repub 
lic  of  France  can  bestow  upon  him,  loves,  I  know,  to 
come  back  and  rub  elbows  here  and  renew  the  old  com 
radeship  which  made  the  name  and  the  presence  of 
Horace  Porter  a  delight  in  this  club  a  score  of  years 
ago. 

Gentlemen,  the  story  of  his  achievement,  the  story  of 
the  many  charms  that  have  always  delighted  us  in  his 
companionship,  is  too  long  for  me  to  try  to  tell.  He  is 
here;  let  him  speak  for  himself.  And  I  want  to  tell 
you  who  have  not  been  long  in  this  club,  that  he  is  at 
his  old  tricks  again.  He  has  the  secret  of  perpetual 
youth,  and  all  its  charm.  "While  we  grow  old,  he  re 
mains  young ;  do  not  let  him  tell  you  that,  like  St.  Paul 
or  some  other  saint,  he  dyes  daily.  There  is  no  truth  in 
it,  not  a  word ;  but  I  do  want  to  say  this  of  him  and  for 
him,  that,  like  the  perfect  typical  American,  he  comes 
back,  after  his  long  residence  abroad,  the  same  old  child 
of  this  young  country,  perfectly  unspoiled,  the  typical 
American,  the  ideal  member  of  the  Lotos  Club. 

In  spite  of  his  long  residence  at  the  brilliant  French 
capital,  I  know  that  he  feels,  in  common  with  most  of 
us  who  have  been  much  abroad,  that  "  there  's  only  one 
Paris,  and  that  's  New  York." 


HOEACE  PORTEB 

AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  NOVEMBEE  18,  1905 

THIS  most  cordial  demonstration  of  good  will,  this 
all  too  generous  manifestation  of  friendship  and 
kindly  greeting,  commands  my  profoundest  gratitude, 
my  deepest  sense  of  obligation.  I  come  to  you  to-night 
able  to  say,  in  the  words  of  the  great  sea-fighter  whose 
name  has  just  been  mentioned,  and  whose  remains  were 
brought  to  our  shores  recently  by  a  historic  fleet  com 
manded  by  one  of  his  most  deserving  successors  in 
accomplishment  and  courage,  my  friend  Admiral  Sigs- 
bee;  I  can  quote  his  words  when  he  resigned  sometime 
after  the  War  of  the  Revolution:  "I  have  thrown  off 
the  robes  of  office ;  I  have  now  no  rank  but  that  of  fel 
lowship  ;  no  title  but  that  of  comrade. ' ' 

I  had  a  very  warm  recognition  of  my  humble  instru 
mentality  in  recovering  those  remains  a  few  weeks  ago. 
Coming  down  Sixth  Avenue,  I  was  looking  for  a  place 
to  register  as  a  voter  at  the  late  election,  and  a  police 
man  recognized  me  and  showed  me  into  an  undertak 
er's  establishment. 

Our  worthy  president  has  once  more  upbraided  me 
upon  my  youth;  he  seems  dissatisfied  with  my  nut- 
brown  locks.  My  hair  does  not  wear  what  Shakespeare 
would  call  the  silver  livery  of  age.  He  does  not  take 

280 


HORACE  PORTER  281 

into  consideration  that  my  mustache  has  done  its  full 
duty  and  is  growing  white,  and  this  is  in  inverse  order, 
because  it  is  twenty  years  younger  than  the  hair.  I 
fear  it  may  give  rise  to  the  thought  that  I  have  exer 
cised  my  mouth  more  than  my  brain. 

I  have  listened  and  was  naturally  flattered  by  all  the 
kindly  expressions  of  your  president— that  perpetual 
president— may  he  always  be  our  perpetual  president ! 
— for  there  is  no  one  who  has  done  so  much  for  the 
administration  of  the  business  of  the  club ;  no  one  can 
equal  him  in  weaving  those  graceful  phrases  which  lend 
such  charm  to  all  the  hospitable  banquets  given  in  this 
hall.  I  listened  to  the  encomiums  he  was  kind  enough 
to  pronounce  upon  me  and  my  career  with  as  much 
satisfaction  as  if  they  had  all  been  true  and  deserved, 
but  I  was  thinking  at  the  time  of  that  young  English 
clergyman  who  some  years  ago  went  to  a  country  house 
and  asked  for  his  "bawth, "  and  there  was  no  bath.  He 
set  about  searching  for  one,  and  after  a  while  they 
heard  him  in  the  attic  splashing  around  in  the  tank, 
and  the  lady  of  the  house  cried  out:  "Good  gracious, 
that  's  our  tank  of  drinking-water!"  To  which  he 
replied:  "Oh,  don't  mind  me;  I  'm  not  using  soap." 

Eight  years  ago,  my  friends,  we  parted.  An  incon 
siderate  government  condemned  me  to  hard  labor  for 
a  term  of  years,  and  deportation  to  a  foreign  country. 
I  took  occasion  to  say,  in  departing,  to  everybody,  every 
member  of  this  club,  "If  you  ever  get  within  a  mile  of 
my  embassy,  be  sure  to  stop  there."  I  said  more.  I 
said,  "The  latch-string  will  always  be  on  the  outside, 
and  there  will  always  be  a  seat  for  you  in  my  pew  at 
church."  Candor  compels  me  to  state  that  the  latch- 


282  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

string  was  often  pulled,  but  the  seats  in  the  pew  re 
mained  vacant. 

And  there  was  one  member  I  observed  stopped  his 
subscription  to  the  Christian  Observer;  he  did  n't  want 
to  have  an  observer  while  he  was  in  Paris. 

Last  year  I  notified  my  government  that  I  could  not 
make  my  residence  there  immortal  by  making  it  eternal, 
and  that  I  might  grow  too  fat  feeding  at  the  public  crib 
and  partaking  of  the  succulent  food  of  the  French 
cuisine,  and  that  if  I  died  my  demise  might  be  attrib 
uted  to  a  foreign  growth  in  the  stomach.  A  man  away 
from  America  for  a  period  of  years  begins  to  feel  like 
the  coupon  of  a  railway  ticket — not  good  if  detached; 
and  I  thought  if  I  did  n't  get  home  there  would  not  be 
standing-room  left  for  me;  it  would  be  like  the  night 
of  the  benefit,  when  the  last  man  that  came  in  had  to 
leave  his  cane  outside. 

I  see  by  the  statistics  that  this  population  has  run  up 
to  over  four  millions,  twice  as  many  as  there  used  to  be 
when  I  was  here;  the  explanation  of  that  may  be  that 
the  Americans  have  been  leading  double  lives.  I  did 
not  know  but  that  I  might  find  myself  in  the  position 
of  the  woman  who  entered  the  omnibus  in  Paris  one 
day,  in  the  Boulevard  Haussmann.  She  was  about  as 
broad  as  she  was  long;  she  was  the  goddess  of  abun 
dance;  she  was  like  Tony  Lumpkin's  girl,  the  "full  of 
a  door."  There  was  no  seat,  and  a  lady  said  to  her, 
"You  have  no  place  to  sit  down."  She  replied,  "Yes, 
I  have,  but  there  is  nowhere  to  put  it. ' ' 

I  was  often  asked  the  chief  characteristics  of  the 
members  of  this  club,  for  the  club  is  known  for  its  hos 
pitality  wherever  you  go,  and  I  said :  "The  members  of 


HORACE  PORTER  283 

this  club  are  troubled  with  a  shyness  that  sometimes 
becomes  aggressive.  You  invite  one  of  them  to  your 
house,  anc1  the  first  thing  you  know  he  is  taking  a  seat 
on  the  roof ;  ask  him  to  a  feast,  and  the  first  you  know 
he  is  placed  at  the  head  of  the  table;  put  him  in  an 
orchestra,  and  the  next  thing,  he  is  playing  on  the  big 
fiddle;  and  if  he  is  going  to  be  cremated,  he  always 
specifies  that  it  shall  be  in  the  crater  of  Vesuvius.  As 
for  their  heads,  they  are  just  large  enough  to  contain 
the  maximum  of  intellectuality,  and  their  female  rela 
tions  have  such  small  feet  that  they  have  their  shoes 
blacked  with  a  tooth-brush. " 

Now  that  I  have  got  home,  I  feel  that  sense  of  home 
life,  because  we  are  on  an  island  here;  it  is  like  the 
feeling  they  sometimes  have  in  England,  I  suppose 
because  they  are  on  an  island.  Some  years  ago  in  a 
London  theatre  there  sat  in  an  orchestra  seat  a  British 
matron ;  she  wore  a  hat  of  the  vintage  of  1823,  and  her 
hair  was  plastered  down  over  her  temples  with  Spauld- 
ing's  prepared  glue,  after  the  manner  of  Dickens 's 
characters,  or  like  the  dowager  duchesses  that  Du  Mau- 
rier  used  to  picture.  The  play  was  "Cleopatra,"  and 
in  the  fourth  act  a  messenger  arrives  and  announces  the 
destruction  of  Antony's  army.  Cleopatra  seizes  a 
weapon  and  strikes  him  dead  at  her  feet.  The  curtain 
went  down,  amid  applause  long  and  loud.  After  it  was 
over  the  British  matron  said,  "How  different  from  the 
'ome  life  of  our  own  dear  queen ! ' ' 

Well,  glad  as  I  am  to  get  back,  I  passed  many  delight 
ful  years  in  that  pleasant  land  of  France.  I  thought, 
when  going  over,  there  would  not  be  much  of  interest, 
and  I  thought  I  would  stay  a  very  few  years;  but  I 


284  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

soon  found  that  Paris  was  becoming  the  real  capital  of 
Europe,  and  that  there  convened  there  nearly  all  the 
missions  and  congresses  and  tribunals  and  inquests  of 
the  world ;  and  then  broke  out  the  war  with  Spain  and 
the  archives  were  transferred  to  Paris.  During  the 
war  I  was  expected  to  keep  tab  on  the  Spaniards ;  then, 
when  that  was  over,  there  came  the  peace  commission, 
one  of  the  most  intelligent  ever  organized.  They  sat 
patiently  and  made  an  honest,  fair,  and  generous  treaty 
of  peace,  and  what  was  interesting  about  it  was  that 
they  called  it  the  treaty  of  Paris.  It  was  the  second; 
the  first  made  by  Benjamin  Franklin  and  his  colleagues. 
And  these  two  treaties  were  signed  on  the  same  historic 
table;  so  that  all  our  diplomatic  transactions  with 
France  have  had  within  them  the  consummation  of 
peace ;  we  have  always  been  close  together,  and  may  the 
ruthless  hand  of  discord  never  rend  us  asunder ! 

And  in  Paris  they  had  that  great  exposition,  where 
the  buildings  were  palaces  and  the  grounds  were  gar 
dens,  and  the  street  scenes  seemed  as  if  they  had  been 
touched  by  the  wand  of  a  magician  and  turned  into 
scenes  of  fairyland ;  there  you  could  fasten  your  atten 
tion  on  masterpieces  of  artistic  genius,  those  noble  crea 
tions  which  rouse  our  deepest  emotions  and  appeal  to 
our  higher  senses,  induce  the  power  of  reflection,  thrill 
us  with  the  grandeur  of  the  creative  faculty,  and  in 
spire  us  with  the  majesty  of  achievement. 

There  came  the  difficulties  in  China,  when  all  the 
great  powers  were  sending  their  armies  over  to  save  the 
lives  of  our  threatened  representatives,  and  when  it  was 
about  all  a  diplomatist  could  do  to  keep  those  armies 
from  being  touched  off  and  fighting  each  other.  Then 


HORACE  PORTER  285 

came  this  great  war  in  the  Orient,  which,  happily  for 
the  peace  of  the  world,  resulted  in  peace  organized  by 
our  President,  who  had  the  American  courage  to  take 
the  initiative  and  bring  about  the  greatest  result  in 
modern  diplomacy. 

The  clubs  there  are  different  from  ours;  there  are 
many  charming  organizations,  but  they  are  not,  in  the 
sense  that  we  use  the  word,  a  club.     They  are  conve 
nient  places  for  playing  cards  and  other  games;  men 
do  not  often  dine  there,  for  the  people  on  the  Continent 
are  accustomed  to  dine  at  their  famous  restaurants. 
You  meet  very  few  people  socially,  and  they  have  not 
the  idea  of  home  as  we  understand  it.    "We  cannot  put 
our  friends  coming  from  outside  cities  up  for  two  weeks 
and  invite  them  to  the  hospitality  of  the  club.    It  is  all 
very  charming,  but  not  as  it  is  understood  here.    Every 
club  has  been  organized  on  some  specific  basis,  it  has 
some  special  characteristic.    The  special  characteristic 
of  this  club,  which  has  made  it  well  known  and  favor 
ably  known  at  home  and  abroad,  is  its  broad,  unlimited 
hospitality.    It  has  looked  out  for  men  in  its  own  land 
whom  it  wanted  to  honor,  and  it  has  looked  after  those 
coming  from  abroad ;  it  has  given  many  a  good  fellow  a 
send-off  that  has  warmed  the  cockles  of  his  heart.     A 
member  of  this  club  is  at  home  anywhere,  in  his  own 
land,   treading  a  foreign  strand,   in  the   capitals  of 
Europe,  the  cool  valleys  and  the  mountains  of  Bohemia. 
Sometimes  they  join  those  Bohemian  impressionists 
who  insist  on  painting  the  woman's  hair  green,  the 
country  yellow,  and  the  town  red.     And  yet,  having 
been  the  recipient  of  too  many  of  your  good  things 
here,  when  going  abroad,  when  coming  home  from  pub- 


286  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

lie  service,  you  have  never  failed  to  give  me  hearty 
cheer  within  your  walls,  and  made  me  feel  that  I  am 
doubly  at  home.  I  feel  a  deep  debt  of  gratitude.  Burke 
says  that  gratitude  is  a  debt  which  it  is  left  to  the 
debtor  to  pay  in  whatever  coin  he  pleases.  Alas,  I  have 
no  coin  of  sufficient  value  to  pay  you  the  debt  of  grati 
tude  I  owe.  But  I  must  close. 

In  the  language  of  the  song,  "There  are  others"; 
and  let  me  close  in  the  words  used  by  Jacob  to  the 
angel :  ' l  Now,  pull  in  the  ladder. ' ' 


SETH  LOW 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  HOEACE  POETEE, 
NOVEMBEE  18,  1905 

I  THINK  it  was  our  late  fellow-citizen  Amos  Cum- 
mings  who  is  reported  to  have  used  the  expression 
in  Congress,  " primeval  forest,"  and  when  asked  by  his 
fellow-congressman  Timothy  Campbell  what  it  meant, 
replied  that  he  was  not  sure,  but  thought  it  was  "a 
place  where  the  hand  of  man  had  never  set  foot. ' ' 

I  do  not  know  whether  that  would  correctly  describe 
Paris  or  New  York,  but  I  have  thought  that  about  our 
honored  guest  of  to-night  there  was  something  as  de 
lightfully  natural  and  unusual  as  that.  I  became  espe 
cially  aware  of  his  many-sided  character  by  being 
present  once  when  he  and  I  were  members  of  a  small 
group  who  gave  a  dinner  to  Admiral  Erben.  He  told 
us  that  he  had  taken  part  in  what  he  called  then  an 
amphibious  expedition,  in  the  early  days  of  the  war, 
when  soldiers  were  sent  by  sea  to  take  part  in  some 
enterprise  on  land.  He  told  the  admiral  that  he  thought 
the  soldiers  had  surprised  the  sailors  beyond  imagina 
tion  ;  that  apparently  up  to  that  time  they  had  thought 
soldiers  could  throw  up  nothing  but  earthworks,  but 
they  astonished  the  crew  of  that  particular  ship  by  the 
extent  and  variety  of  their  capacity  in  that  direction. 
In  a  word,  they  parted  with  everything  except  the  im- 

287 


288  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

mortality  of  their  souls.  I  dare  say  that  when  General 
Porter  told  that  he  hardly  realized  what  a  prophetic 
expedition  that  was,  or  how  strikingly  it  illustrated 
what  was  to  become  of  him,  that  he  should  do  so  much 
to  erect  a  permanent  memorial  of  the  great  general  he 
served  so  long  and  so  well,  and  that  he  should  do  so 
much  toward  recovering  for  the  United  States  the 
mortal  remains  of  a  great  captain  of  Revolutionary 
days. 

I  remember,  a  few  years  ago,  shaking  hands  with  an 
old  man  at  Plymouth  who  was  then  ninety-four  years 
of  age.  He  told  me  that  he  had  seen  Gran'ther  Cobb, 
who  died  in  Plymouth  at  the  age  of  one  hundred  and 
six,  and  that  Gran'ther  Cobb  had  seen  the  funeral  of 
Peregrine  "White,  the  first  white  child  born  in  New 
England;  so  that  at  that  time  only  three  lives  were 
between  me  and  the  first  white  child  born  on  the  shores 
of  New  England.  I  confess  that  as  I  look  at  General 
Porter  to-night,  and  realize  that  he  has  shaken  hands 
with  John  Paul  Jones,  a  man  who  died  one  hundred 
and  thirteen  years  ago,  and  see  how  well  preserved  he 
is  in  appearance,  it  does  not  seem  to  me  so  strange  that 
two  lives  can  span  the  whole  history  of  our  people  on 
this  continent. 

What  a  career  it  has  been,  this  that  we  celebrate  to 
night  !  How  typically  American  in  the  best  sense !  As 
our  chairman  has  said,  there  was  a  lad  who  went  to 
West  Point  and  was  taught  a  soldier's  business  by  the 
nation,  and  when  the  nation's  life  was  in  peril  offered 
his  life  to  defend  it.  His  career  was  enough  to  satisfy 
the  ambition  and  pride  of  any  man.  It  was  his  good 


SETH  LOW  289 

fortune  also  to  be  thrown  into  the  warmest  personal 
relations  with  the  grand  commander  who  preserved  the 
perpetuity  of  the  Union ;  for  I  think  it  may  be  admitted 
that  Grant  did  not  do  more  by  his  victories  to  per 
petuate  the  Union  than  by  his  great  utterance  which  is 
carved  upon  his  monument  in  this  city,  when  he  said, 
"Let  us  have  peace. " 

It  was  that  spirit,  the  spirit  of  the  soldier  who 
hazarded  everything  in  the  day  of  danger,  and  who 
when  the  war  was  over  said,  "Now  we  must  get  to 
gether,  "  that  has  made  our  country  what  we  see  it 
to-day,  and  General  Porter,  as  he  fought  by  the  side 
of  his  great  commander,  so  has  he  done  what  he  could 
to  further  the  work  of  peace  which  Grant  began.  Many 
men  so  closely  connected  with  the  Army  might  have 
been  inclined  to  stop  there,  but  I  suppose  that  General 
Porter  has  heard  the  toast  of  "The  Army  and  Navy 
forever!"  so  often  that  he  really  could  not  stop  with 
the  Army,  but  had  to  identify  himself  with  the  Navy  in 
some  way. 

I  remember  pointing  out  on  one  occasion  that  old 
Rome  sought  the  conquest  of  the  habitable  globe  and 
was  satisfied  she  had  made  it,  but  that  modern  Italy, 
through  Marconi,  has  sought  for  the  mastery  of  the 
air,  and  has  given  to  the  Italy  of  to-day  the  triumphant 
glory  of  making  the  very  atmosphere  throb  in  obe 
dience  to  the  commands  of  the  Italian.  So  General 
Porter,  not  satisfied  with  sharing  the  glory  of  the 
Army,  must  needs  share  the  glory  of  Paul  Jones  of  the 
United  States  Navy.  It  was  a  fascinating  mission,  and 
I  congratulate  him  that  he  was  permitted  to  realize  it. 


290  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Most  of  you  have  read,  in  The  Century,  his  account  of 
the  recovery  of  the  body  of  Paul  Jones.  Many  of  you, 
I  hope,  have  heard  the  story  from  his  own  lips,  for  it  is 
as  interesting  as  a  tale  from  "The  Arabian  Nights. " 
If  you  have,  I  am  sure  you  will  agree  with  me  that 
Conan  Doyle  never  pictured,  much  less  achieved,  a 
greater  triumph. 

I  read  in  the  paper  the  other  day  that  Conan  Doyle 
had  been  asked  to  solve  some  mystery  that  the  police 
had  been  unable  to  disintegrate,  but,  while  he  might 
write  of  Sherlock  Holmes,  he  declined  the  undertaking ; 
but  General  Porter,  though  he  has  not  written  of  Sher 
lock  Holmes,  performed  a  feat  that  he  may  well  be 
proud  of,  in  starting  on  that  quest  with  absolutely  no 
clue,  and  following  it  through  one  labyrinth  after  an 
other  until  he  brought  the  body  of  Paul  Jones  to  be 
buried  on  American  soil. 

General  Porter's  career  is  interesting,  not  simply 
because  he  was  a  gallant  soldier,  nor  simply  because  he 
has  shown  himself  so  patriotic  in  reference  to  the  Navy, 
but  also  because  he  was  one  of  the  great  multitude  of 
men  who,  having  fought  for  four  years,  turned,  when 
the  war  was  over,  into  avenues  of  peaceful  occupation, 
and  gave  years  of  useful  service  to  the  industry  of  the 
country  in  private  life.  And  then,  as  we  all  know, 
when  the  opportunity  or  the  duty  came  to  take  up 
diplomatic  work,  he  went  into  that  as  naturally  as  he 
went  into  the  Army,  and  acquitted  himself  as  bril 
liantly  as  on  the  field  of  battle. 

Many  of  us  have  been  in  Paris  when  he  was  our  am 
bassador  there,  and  I  speak  the  words  of  truth  and 


SETH  LOW  291 

soberness  when  I  say  that  every  one  of  his  countrymen 
who  was  in  Paris  was  proud  that  he  was  an  American. 
1  am  sincerely  glad  to  have  been  permitted  to  join  you 
in  welcoming  General  Porter  home,  and  I  think  the  city 
of  New  York  seems  a  cheerier  place  now  that  he  has 
come  back  once  more. 


WOODROW  WILSON 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  FEBRUARY  3,  1906 

I  AM  sincerely  obliged  to  Mr.  Lawrence  for  the 
words,  the  very  gracious  words,  of  introduction 
which  he  has  just  uttered,  and  yet  I  must  say  that  this 
is  not  the  kind  of  occasion  to  put  a  man  most  at  his 
ease.  I  feel  very  much  as  the  old  woman  did  who  went 
into  the  side-show  of  a  circus,  and  saw,  or  thought  she 
saw,  a  man  reading  a  newspaper  through  a  two-inch 
board.  "Oh,  let  me  out  of  here,"  she  cried,  "this  is  no 
place  for  me,  with  these  thin  things  on ! " 

I  feel  that  the  guise  of  greatness  with  which  he  has 
clothed  me  is  perhaps  a  very  transparent  disguise,  and 
that,  after  all,  is  all  that  I  need  this  evening.  I  am  in 
the  plight  of  the  Methodist  divine  down  in  Tennessee 
who  spent  a  quarter  of  an  hour  praying  for  power. 
One  of  his  deacons  said  to  him,  taking  him  aside, 
"Parson,  you  are  praying  for  the  wrong  thing;  what 
are  you  praying  for  power  for?  You  don't  need  any 
power ;  you  ought  to  pray  for  ideas. ' ' 

I  think  it  a  very  graceful  and  interesting  arrange 
ment  of  yours  to  put  the  man  about  whom  you  are 
going  to  speak  first  on  the  program  of  speakers.  I 
have  an  excellent  opportunity  of  telling  you  more 
about  myself  than  you  can  possibly  know,  and  stealing 
all  your  thunder,  and  giving  you  that  kind  of  discour- 

292 


WOODROW  WILSON  293 

agement  it  may  be  worth  my  while  to  give  you,  like  the 
youngster  they  tell  about  who  found  some  of  his  chums 
fishing  on  Sunday.  He  told  the  minister.  "Well," 
said  the  minister,  "did  you  do  anything  to  discourage 
them?"  "Oh,  yes,"  replied  the  boy;  "I  stole  their 
bait."  I  might  do  the  sa.me  thing  to  you,  and  so  pre 
vent  any  more  fishing  in  these  now,  I  assure  you, 
troubled  waters. 

There  are  many  things  that  this  country  needs,  gen 
tlemen.  It  needs  knowledge ;  it  needs  skill,  and  a  great 
deal  of  it,  and  of  excellent  sort ;  it  needs  that  scientific 
discovery  should  be  pushed  forward  to  practical  inven 
tion;  and  I  take  it  that  above  all  things  else  it  needs 
enlightenment,  in  order  that  these  needs  may  be  put  in 
appropriate  setting  in  our  thoughts,  and  we  may  have 
a  definite  notion  what  it  is  they  are  for.  Are  we  to 
have  skill  in  order  that  we  may  be  merely  mechanics? 
Is  it  not  necessary  that  there  should  be  some  general 
line  in  which  we  should  use  these  things  in  their  proper 
proportions  and  perspective  ?  Surely  it  is  the  duty  of 
the  universities  to  supply  the  enlightenment  in  order 
that  they  may  see  the  real  journey  they  are  making, 
and  the  journey  the  races  have  made  in  the  past,  and 
the  journey  we  should  wish  them  to  make  in  the  future. 

There  is  nothing  that  so  disturbs  my  imagination  as 
the  thought  that  we  are  merely  one  generation;  that 
we  are  merely  an  incident  in  the  great  story,  and  that 
our  success  will  be  judged  in  its  relation  to  the  history 
of  the  people.  Is  that  success  consistent  with  the  plot  ? 
What  is  the  plot?  Is  there  any  plot,  or  plan,  or  se 
quence?  Do  we  know  where  we  came  from?  Do  we 
know  whither  we  are  going  ? 


294  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

I  remember  a  friend  of  mine  telling  me  that  he 
stopped  on  a  Scotch  highway,  and  asked  an  old  fellow 
who  was  breaking  stones  by  the  roadside,  if  that  was 
the  way  to  such  and  such  a  place;  and  the  old  fellow 
said,  "Where  do  you  come  from?"  My  friend  replied, 
"I  don't  know  that  that  is  any  business  of  yours,"  and 
was  told  that  it  was  as  material  as  where  he  was  going 
to.  And,  if  you  reflect,  the  old  man  was  right  when  he 
said,  "I  cannot  tell  you  where  you  are  going,  whether 
you  are  on  the  right  road  or  not,  unless  you  tell  me 
whence  you  come  from. ' ' 

To  use  an  illustration  oft  repeated,  but  which  seems 
indispensable  to  me,  we  very  often  speak  of  a  man  who 
has  lost  his  way  in  the  desert  as  having  lost  himself.  If 
you  will  reflect  upon  that  for  a  moment,  you  will  see 
that  this  is  the  one  thing  he  has  n't  lost.  He  is  there; 
he  has  a  firm  grip  of  himself ;  but  he  has  lost  all  the  rest 
of  the  world.  If  he  could  determine  any  fixed  point  on 
the  globe,  he  would  have  something  to  steer  by,  but  he 
can 't  steer  by  himself. 

And  it  seems  to  me  that  the  only  method  of  guiding 
ourselves  in  life  is  by  determining  fixed  points  and 
steering  by  them.  You  can't  steer  by  yourselves;  you 
must  have  an  established  direction  which  is  not  cen 
tered  in  your  own  person.  When  that  direction  is  es 
tablished,  it  gives  you  general  control,  that  is,  the  way 
of  the  rest  of  the  world.  This  is  what  I  mean  by  the 
map  of  life,  by  those  roads  which  the  race  travels. 

There  are  certain  things  which  the  race  has  found 
out  as  a  means  of  enlightenment,  and  one  of  the  things 
which  it  is  finding  out  is  that  the  way  for  material 
mastery  to  be  found  is  not  to  devote  yourself  to  the 


WOODROW  WILSON  295 

processes  of  material  mastery,  but  to  the  principles  of 
material  mastery,  that  is  to  say,  not  the  processes  of 
manufacture,  but  to  the  sources,  the  pure  sciences. 

The  world  which  intends  to  live  by  science  must 
know  science,  and  in  order  to  know  science  it  must  con 
stantly  refer  and  resort  to  men  who  bury  themselves  in 
the  laboratories  and  seek  the  foundations  of  the  forces 
used,  the  men  who  are  not  seeking  anything  in  the 
making  of  money  or  the  extension  of  manufactures,  but 
are  studying  to  find  out  the  most  profound  secrets  of 
nature. 

You  know  that  we  are  sometimes  laughed  at  for  brag 
ging  of  the  size  of  this  continent,  for  manifestly  we 
did  n't  make  it ;  and  foreigners  think  us  very  ridiculous 
for  saying  abroad  that  America  is  so  big.  It  is  not  at 
all  ridiculous,  because  we  have  conquered  all  of  it.  We 
are  as  big  as  the  things  we  get.  Our  progress  is  mea 
sured  by  the  size  of  America.  If  it  had  proved  too  big 
for  us,  we  should  have  to  be  ashamed;  it  is  because  it 
has  not  proved  too  big  for  us  that  we  are  proud  of  its 
size.  If  you  can  recall  the  history  of  this  race  you  will 
remember  that  when  we  came  to  these  shores,  we  came 
helpless  as  infants ;  and  when  you  remember  the  miles 
of  continent  that  lie  between  us  and  the  Pacific,  and 
the  character  of  the  thick  forests,  and  the  hills  upon 
hills,  and  remember  that  there  was  n't  any  road  made 
for  us  that  we  knew  how  to  travel  or  find,  and  that  we 
have  sped  our  way  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
chiefly  by  knowing  the  processes  of  nature,  you  will  see 
that  we  have  conquered  the  country  by  having  from 
first  to  last  knowledge  of  the  sciences,  and  that  we  never 
should  have  had  this  knowledge  if  there  had  not  been 


296  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

laboratories  in  which,  men  who  did  n't  care  either  for 
commerce  or  civilization  were  constantly  getting  to  this 
simple  foundation  of  the  hidden  forces,  and  man's  best 
relation  to  the  great  streams  that  drive  our  mills  and 
make  progress  possible.  So  that  if  men  want  to  keep 
the  greatness  of  the  race  they  must  constantly  see  that 
it  resorts  to  pure  science,  and  that  is  the  business  of  the 
university. 

I  have  sat  beside  very  successful  men  on  occasions, 
and  heard  them  explain  the  philosophy  of  their  lives, 
and  wondered  how  they  had  attained  what  they  termed 
their  successes.  And  yet  it  shows  one  thing,  that  a  man 
can  steer  in  this  great  uncharted  ocean  of  our  life  if 
he  steers  by  some  sort  of  compass,  and  the  compass  that 
he  should  steer  by  is  the  compass  of  experience,  the 
knowledge  of  the  human  mind  and  human  nature. 

I  suppose  that  some  very  distinguished  philosophers 
have  a  very  limited  practical  knowledge  of  human 
nature,  but  all  distinguished  philosophers  I  have  ever 
known  have  had  a  great  deal  of  human  nature  them 
selves.  It  is  worth  your  while  to  know  what  ridiculous 
notions  people  have  had  about  themselves,  as  well  as 
the  notions  of  a  nation.  Preachers  are  right,  whether 
you  want  them  to  be  or  not,  in  saying  that  we  have  got 
to  have  a  philosophy  of  life  and  conduct.  The  trouble 
with  us  is  that  we  can  get  along  with  very  inconsistent 
philosophies  of  life  and  conduct.  De  Tocqueville  said 
it  was  no  argument  that  the  American  philosophy  was 
consistent  because  it  worked,  for,  he  said,  Americans 
can  work  any  combination;  and  so  it  is  no  argument 
for  the  excellence  of  your  philosophy  that  it  works: 
you  can  work  anything.  The  different  parts  don't  have 


WOODROW  WILSON  297 

to  be  consistent,  but  it  is  a  distinct  characteristic  of  the 
two  most  successful  races,  the  Romans  and  ourselves, 
that  they  have  blazed  their  minds  with  a  theory  about 
themselves,  and  then  practised  whatever  theory  suited 
their  convenience,  and  the  very  best,  naturally,  have 
been  those  who  reduced  their  experience  and  practice 
to  a  philosophy.  For  example,  what  better  generaliza 
tion  could  you  have  as  a  description  of  the  distin 
guished  man  who  now  heads  the  nation,  than  De 
Tocqueville  's  characterization  of  a  constitutional  states 
man:  "A  man  of  ordinary  opinions  and  extraordinary 
abilities. ' ' 

I  have  often  said  that  I  have  learned  a  great  deal 
more  politics  from  the  poets  than  from  the  systematic 
writers  of  politics.  I  have  been  a  systematic  writer  of 
politics  myself,  and  I  don't  wonder  at  it.  Any  sys 
tematic  writing  is  immoral  writing.  I  say  immoral 
writing,  because  no  man  knows  enough  about  anything 
to  write  about  it  systematically.  No  man  knows  more 
of  a  certain  subject  than  some  parts.  Suppose  he  starts 
to  write  systematically.  He  must  have  some  sort  of  a 
table  of  contents,  a  systematic  scheme  of  chapters.  It 
may  be  possible  he  has  to  talk  about  things  he  does  n't 
know,  in  order  to  make  the  chapters  about  the  same 
length.  Some  contain  things  he  knows;  some  contain 
things  he  does  n't  know,  but  has  taken  from  somebody 
else ;  and  he  fixes  the  surface  so  that  all  will  look  alike, 
the  parts  not  being  divided,  so  that  nobody  may  under 
stand  and  stand  on  the  weak  parts  long  enough  to 
break  through. 

Now,  I  say  that  that  is  immoral,  and  I  am  materially 
opposed  to  systematic  writing.  The  poets  are  not  sys- 


298  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

tematic.  The  poets  talk  about  only  the  things  they 
have  come  definitely  to  understand,  and  they  are  inter 
preting  to  you  in  the  phrases  and  language  that  the 
systematic  writer  has  not  been  able  to  incorporate  in 
the  volume.  Take  this  list  of  qualifications  which  might 
be  headed  "Political  Workers" : 

Some  sense  of  duty;  something  of  the  faith; 
Some  reverence  for  the  laws  the  wise  have  made ; 
Some  patient  force  to  change  them  when  we  will ; 
Some  civic  manhood,  firm  against  the  crowd. 

Where  can  you  find  this  better  depicted  than  in  these 
lines  ? 

I  will  not  trust  a  man  to  understand  the  song  of  a 
people  who  is  not  deeply  read  in  the  literature  of  his 
own  people— in  the  imaginative  literature  of  his  people. 
For,  gentlemen,  we  are  lifted  from  achievement  to 
achievement  by  imagination.  No  man  ever  demon 
strated  an  achievement ;  he  conceived  the  achievement. 
There  was  a  vision  dreamed  in  some  moment  of  lofty 
feeling,  and  he  is  elevated  to  it  by  something  in  him 
that  aspires  to  a  height  that  the  race  has  not  yet  at 
tained,  and  in  which,  therefore,  he  is  guided  by  feeling 
or  by  imagination ;  and  that  is  the  way  of  the  men  who 
lift  their  figures  above  the  general  crowd  and  are  picked 
out  as  the  leading  men,  the  distinguished  men,  the 
achieving  men  of  our  generation. 

Is  it  not  worth  while  that  somewhere  young  men 
should  draw  apart  from  active  life  for  a  little  while  to 
study  these  things,  to  contemplate  these  things,  and  be 
lifted  out  of  the  rut  of  general  experience  into  the 


WOODROW  WILSON  299 

road  of  special  experience  ?  There  are  some  things  that 
are  very  material  characteristics  of  the  nation  we  belong 
to.  Two  things  I  shall  mention :  one,  the  extraordinary 
authority  of  the  majority  in  this  country;  the  practi 
cally  overwhelming  compulsion  of  the  majority.  I 
would  speak  with  deference  of  the  majority,  because  at 
the  present  time  I  belong  to  the  minority— at  least  the 
part  of  it  I  belong  to  is  so  select  and  small  that  I  sup 
pose  you  must  regard  us  as  the  guests  of  the  majority, 
and  I  must  speak  with  that  respect  with  which  the 
guest  speaks  of  his  host.  We  are  at  present  being  en 
tertained  in  this  country  by  the  Republican  party. 

I  will  make  my  obeisance  to  my  entertainers,  but, 
notwithstanding,  I  should  like  to  suggest  that  it  is 
worth  while  sometimes  to  be  very  impertinent  to  the 
majority,  and  that  university  men  are,  if  they  are 
worthy  of  the  name,  the  men  especially  qualified  by 
their  training  to  entertain  independent  opinions.  There 
are  moments  when  I  actually  regret  being  an  imperial 
ist,  because  the  anti-imperialists  are  put  down  as 
though  they  had  no  right  to  their  opinions;  whereas 
they  are  entitled  to  their  opinions,  even  if  they  are 
inconsistent.  This  reminds  me  of  a  story  of  Mr.  Hay 's. 
He  said  that  the  anti-imperialists,  in  their  demand  that 
this  country  give  up  the  Philippines,  because  it  was  not 
right  that  this  nation  should  hold  dependencies,  and 
that  they  should  be  turned  over  to  Germany,  reminded 
him  of  the  young  lady  who  was  much  given  to  dress 
and  self-adornment,  and  who  experienced  religion. 
When  she  was  asked  by  some  of  her  friends  who  noticed 
how  plainly  she  was  garbed,  what  she  had  done  with  all 
her  pretty  things,  she  replied,  "Oh,  when  I  found  that 


300  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

my  jewelry  was  dragging  me  down  to  hell,  I  gave  it  to 
my  sister. ' ' 

I  don 't  mean  that  I  am  desirous  of  belonging  to  these 
inconsistents,  these  anti-imperialists,  but  they  have  a 
right  to  their  opinions  even  if  they  are  inconsistent. 
The  time  may  come  when  we  need  * '  civic  manhood  firm 
against  the  crowd/'  and  have  a  majority  that  under  no 
consideration  must  prevail,  when  the  crowd  is  not 
worthy  of  our  respect,  and  there  should  be  civic  man 
hood  enough  to  stand  firm  against  it  until  it  turns  out 
that  the  crowd  knows  what  it  is  about;  and  we  won't 
know  until  somebody  does  stand  out  against  it  worthy 
its  respect. 

Then  there  is  another  thing;  that  is,  the  extraordi 
nary  influence  in  this  country  which  the  accomplished 
fact  has.  If  you  throw  yourself  against  anything  that 
has  been  done,  you  will  be  told,  ' '  What  is  the  use  ?  The 
thing  has  been  done;  we  must  accept  it."  I  remember 
the  impatience  with  which  the  law  class  to  which  I  used 
to  lecture  on  constitutional  law,  and  which  endured 
many  things  at  my  hands,  used  to  hear  my  arguments 
to  the  effect  that  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  was  in  error  in  the  Dartmouth  College  case,  and 
based  its  decision  upon  a  misunderstanding  of  the 
English  law  and  elementary  rights  as  laid  down  in 
Blackstone. 

The  youngsters  looked  at  me  in  amazement  to  see  me 
run  up  against  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
and,  in  the  second  place,  they  said, l '  Suppose  they  were 
wrong ;  the  Dartmouth  College  case  is  law,  and  that  set 
tles  it. ' '  The  Dartmouth  case  is  law ;  if  it  is  mistaken 
law,  must  it  always  be  law?  Is  there  no  such  thing  as 


WOODROW  WILSON  301 

reversing  in  some  conservative  fashion  the  mistakes  of 
the  Supreme  Court?  Is  there  such  a  thing  as  the  jus 
tification  of  men,  who  can  reason  of  their  own  will, 
accepting  an  unreasonable  opinion?  I  am  assuming 
now  that  you  will  confess  it  is  unreasonable;  if  you 
were  to  confess  it  is  unreasonable,  would  you  say  that 
because  it  is  law  it  should  stand,  and  say  nothing  as  to 
its  validity  as  reason  ? 

Must  we  not  have,  gentlemen,  some  scheme  of  life, 
some  particular  hope,  some  great  set  of  principles? 
Shall  we  forget  that  our  eternal  Judge  was  the  judge 
of  men  who  are  convinced  of  the  principles  of  their 
life  ?  Must  we  not  always  have  the  spirit  of  learning, 
which  is  the  open-minded  spirit,  the  catholic  spirit  of 
appreciation,  the  spirit  which  desires  the  best,  that  is 
truth ;  the  spirit  which  is  correctly  convinced  that  there 
are  principles  at  the  heart  of  things,  and  that  things 
are  worth  while  only  in  proportion  to  the  sound  prin 
ciples  that  lie  at  their  heart  ? 


ANDEEW  V.  V.  EAYMOND 

(PRESIDENT  OF  UNION  COLLEGE) 

AT  THE  DINNEK  TO  WOODKOW  WILSON, 
FEBEUAKY  3,  1906 

I  AM  here  by  accident,  as  one  of  the  humblest  mem 
bers  of  the  guild  of  college  presidents,  which  the 
guest  of  the  evening  makes  distinguished. 

This  office  of  a  college  president  is  much  like  other 
offices,  I  imagine,  in  that  it  confers  a  good  deal  less  than 
it  demands.  But  it  is  unlike  other  offices,  at  least  some 
other  offices,  in  that  what  it  does  confer  is  worth  every 
thing;  anything  that  gives  a  man  a  place  at  this  ban 
quet  is  worth  while. 

Apart  from  the  personality  of  the  temporary  occu 
pant  of  the  office,  the  office  of  a  college  president,  I 
always  like  to  believe,  in  the  popular  mind  carries  with 
it  peculiar  dignity  and  honor.  Of  course  a  good  deal 
depends  upon  the  college  of  which  one  is  president,  but 
then  that  does  not  affect  the  kind  of  dignity  and  honor 
that  applies  to  the  office  as  much  as  the  degree ;  and,  if 
I  am  not  mistaken,  a  part  of  the  success  of  this  occasion 
lies  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  tribute  to  the  presidency  of 
Princeton  College,  as  well  as  to  the  president  of  Prince 
ton  College. 

"We  speak  of  the  office  as  "the  presidential  chair, " 
and  I  always  speak  of  it  in  that  way ;  it  is  the  force  of 
habit,  and  a  tribute  to  tradition,  I  think.  No  symbol 

302 


ANDREW  V.  Y.  RAYMOND  303 

was  more  fitting  than  that  chair  in  the  old  days,  calling 
up  a  picture  of  a  man  of  scholarly  leisure,  sitting  in  his 
classroom  or  in  his  library,  thinking,  always  thinking, 
or  writing,  or  teaching,  intent  all  the  while  upon  some 
one  thing  beginning  or  ending  with  the  college. 
I  don't  know  of  any  symbol  that  is  more  edifying  than 
that  was  in  the  days  of  Francis  Williams,  or  Timothy 
Dwight,  or  Mark  Hopkins,  the  symbol  of  the  chair. 
But,  gentlemen,  what  one  of  you  thinks  to-day  of 
the  college  president  as  sitting  long  in  any  one  place? 
What  one  of  you  identifies  the  college  president  with 
the  library  or  classroom?  Not  even  the  substitute 
which  Dr.  Holmes  made  of  the  study  with  the  portable 
chair  meets  the  situation ;  it  has  to  be  a  chair  according 
to  tradition.  If  it  has  to  be  a  chair,  let's  make  it  a 
portable  chair.  It  is  a  portable  chair  to-day,  a  chair  in 
the  trustees'  room  to-morrow,  at  a  faculty  meeting  the 
next  day,  at  an  alumni  banquet  the  next  day,  next  day 
a  chair  in  the  office  of  a  millionaire,  a  possible  bene 
factor,  the  most  anxious  chair  in  the  whole  set ;  on  Sun 
day  it  is  a  pulpit  chair,  and  between  times  it  is  a  Pull 
man  chair. 

How  many  kinds  of  a  chair  it  is ;  and  what  an  endow 
ment  all  those  kinds  of  a  chair  should  have ;  how  many 
kinds  of  a  man  it  takes  to  fill  all  these  kinds  of  a  chair ! 
He  must  have  enough  knowledge  of  business  to  keep 
the  finances  of  his  trustees  better  almost  than  a  sharp 
business  man; -he  must  have  enough  knowledge  of  busi 
ness  to  lead  them  to  do  collectively  what  they  fail  in 
doing  individually.  Is  n't  that  business?  He  must 
have  enough  knowledge  of  educational  matters  to  lead 
his  faculty,  or  make  them  think  he  is  leading  them. 


304  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

He  must  have  enough  knowledge  of  athletics  to  keep  in 
touch  with  the  students.  He  must  be  wise  and  witty, 
or  the  alumni  will  pass  him  by  and  ask  a  mere  profes 
sor  to  speak  at  the  annual  dinner.  He  must  be  technical 
and  professional,  tactful  and  persuasive,  or  the  money 
he  is  after  will  go  to  another  college  or  hospital.  He 
must  be  eloquent  and  orthodox,  or  the  ladies  will  think 
that  he  is  an  unfit  guide  for  their  youth.  He  must  be  a 
dreamer  of  dreams,  as  you  have  told  us,  and  a  man  of 
affairs  at  the  same  time.  He  must  be  good  and  he  must 
be  practical;  and,  in  addition  to  everything  else,  upon 
your  own  authority,  he  must  be  something  of  a  poli 
tician. 

Now,  you  recognize  the  picture  I  mean.  I  hesitate  to 
name  the  man,  but  you  know  him,  and  the  president  of 
Princeton  needs  no  introduction  to  this  intelligent  au 
dience. 

If  it  takes  many  kinds  of  a  man  to  make  any  kind  of 
a  college  president,  it  takes  many  kinds  of  a  great  man 
to  make  a  Princeton  College  president;  and  when  we 
know  that  the  trustees  have  found  such  a  man,  we 
delight,  and  we  unite  to  do  him  honor. 

With  some  of  us  the  office  honors  the  man.  It  goes 
without  saying  in  this  instance,  however,  that  the  order 
is  reversed,  and  so,  whatever  tribute  we  are  willing  and 
glad  to  pay  to  Princeton  and  to  Princeton's  complex, 
multiplex  executive  chair,  we  go  a  little  deeper,  I  think, 
for  the  tribute  that  we  all  offer  to  the  executive  himself, 
the  man  who  always  gives  more  than  he  takes,  wherever 
he  sits. 

Institutions  are  made  by  men,  and  men,  in  general, 
are  made  by  one  man  here  and  there.  It  is  the  personal 


ANDREW  V.  V.  RAYMOND  305 

equation  that  solves  every  problem,  and  it  matters  very 
little  how  many  men  are  engaged  in  any  undertaking, 
it  is  the  one  strong  individuality  dominating  them  that 
determines  the  success  of  the  enterprise.  A  college  as 
an  impersonal  thing,  a  material  thing,  a  group  of  build 
ings  on  a  campus,  would  have  no  more  or  less  influence 
than  a  massive  stone  amid  some  beautiful  surroundings. 
It  would  n't  stir  a  man ;  it  would  n't  compel  a  sacrifice ; 
it  would  n't  quicken  a  heart  throb  to  look  at  it.  What 
is  it,  then,  that  makes  the  college  such  a  power  in  the 
lives  of  so  many  people,  once  it  has  gripped,  and  what 
a  grip  it  does  have  upon  the  affections,  so  that  no  matter 
how  long  a  man  lives,  or  how  far  he  travels  before  he 
gets  back  to  the  old  institution,  its  influence  still  abides 
with  him;  what  is  it,  but  the  power  of  the  inspiring* 
personality  which  breathes  in  the  buildings  and  touches 
them  in  every  corner  of  the  campus,  the  influence  of  the 
association  with  men  who  thought  and  studied  and  lived 
in  the  air  that  inspires  and  helps. 

We  call  this  a  materialistic  age,  a  practical  age;  a 
scientific  age,  an  age  that  demands  the  real  substance. 
You  can't  fool  this  age,  because  it  believes  only  what  it 
sees.  Well,  that  may  be;  but  with  all  our  devotion  to 
materialism,  with  all  that,  there  is  nothing  that  gets 
such  a  hold  of  us,  and  reaches  so  deep  into  our  natures, 
and  lifts  us  out  of  ourselves  and  controls  us  as  some 
thing  that  is  not  material  at  all,  spirit  or  matter,  some 
influence  which  you  can't  put  your  finger  on,  and  can't 
touch  or  describe,  a  persuasive  influence  somehow  comes 
to  you,  and  just  lifts  you  out  of  yourselves  until  you 
become  real  men.  For  just  so  long  as  a  man  is  spiritual, 
with  well  body  and  brain,  the  thing  that  appeals  to  his 


306  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

spirit,  the  invincible  part  of  him,  is  the  thing  that 
makes  a  real  man  of  him. 

And  so  I  think  that  almost  any  institution  is  justified 
that  establishes  the  relation  and  gets  hold  of  a  man's 
spirit,  gets  hold  of  that  part  of  his  nature  where  the 
real  manhood  is,  that  part  of  his  being  that  he  respects 
more  than  he  does  any  other  part.  And  this,  I  think, 
is  the  business  of  the  college.  'It  is  the  business  of  the 
college  more  than  of  any  other  institution  we  know  of, 
excepting,  perhaps,  the  family ;  and  it  is  the  business  of 
the  college  because  of  the  pervasive  influence  of  per 
sonality  in  college  life,  and  above  all,  the  pervasive 
influence  as  a  rule  of  one  man  who  makes  the  college 
spirit. 

I  am  going  to  quote  just  here : 

"Every  time  that  a  man  takes  fire,  he  takes  it  from  fire; 
and  no  weak  individuality  ever  perpetuated  itself  or  touched 
another  heart  to  make  it  strong.  So  that  the  best  way  to 
image  an  institution  for  yourself  is  to  image  it  in  the  terms 
of  a  particular  life  which  happens  to  stand  in  the  history  of 
the  institution  most  conspicuous. 

"We  suppose  sometimes  in  this  day  of  combined  and  organ 
ized  effort  that  the  individual  is  sunk.  But  do  you  know  of 
any  organization  now  vital  which  is  not  touched  by  the 
personal  force  of  some  one  man  who  organized  it,  or  who 
now  conducts  and  dominates  it?  Did  you  ever  know  of  an 
age  in  which  the  power  of  individual  thought  told  for  more 
than  it  does  in  this  day?  Organization  is  not  the  mere  mul 
tiplication  of  individuals;  it  is  the  drawing  of  individuals 
together  into  a  net  formed  by  the  conceptions  of  a  single 
mind;  and  the  greater  the  organization^  the  more  certain 
you  are  to  find  a  great  individuality  at  its  origin  center. 
The  business  which  is  now  handed  on  from  father  to  son 


ANDREW  V.  V.  RAYMOND  307 

in  our  day  cannot  be  handed  on  unless  the  son  is  like  the 
father,  unless  he  has  the  same  power  of  keeping  the  threads 
of  an  intricate  organization  in  his  hand,  and  putting  the 
force  of  an  original  mind  into  the  changing  circumstances  of 
a  business  which  never  stands  still,  and  is  every  day  trans 
formed  by  the  changing  circumstances  of  the  day.  There 
never  was  a  time  when  such  drafts  were  made  upon  indi 
vidual  power  as  are  made  in  this  day  of  organized  industry 
and  organized  effort  upon  every  hand.  Let  us  not  make  the 
mistake  of  supposing,  then,  that  we  can  dispense  with  the 
idiosyncrasy  of  being  ourselves.  A  man  has  nothing  else  to 
contribute  to  the  world  except  himself;  and  that  is  the  prin 
cipal  argument  for  keeping  himself  efficient,  and  keeping 
himself  pure,  because  there  will  be  a  seed  of  decay  in  him 
if  he  does  not." 

Now  I  think  that  is  rather  fine.  Perhaps  no  one  of 
you  here  recognizes  those  words,  with  the  exception  of 
the  man  who  uttered  them,  as  President  Wilson's.  He 
spoke  them  about  a  year  and  a  half  ago  at  the  centen 
nial  celebration  of  Dr.  Eliphalet  Nott's  acceptance  of 
the  presidency  of  Union  College. 

Dr.  Wilson  thought  that  he  was  accounting  for  the 
great  influence  of  a  great  man,  and  did  n't  stop  to 
realize  that  he  was  at  the  same  time  accounting  for  his 
own  influence.  In  drawing  the  picture  of  one  great 
president,  he  drew  the  picture  of  all  great  presidents, 
and  wist  not  that  his  own  features  were  clearly  discern 
ible  by  those  who  watched  the  canvas. 

So  I  think  that  we  all  can  agree  that  we  are  here  not 
so  much  to  honor  the  office  of  the  presidency  of  Prince 
ton  University  as  to  honor  the  man  whose  abilities, 
centering  in  himself,  make  that  office  honorable.  Dr. 


308  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Wilson  has  told  you  something  of  the  business  of  the 
college.  Now,  I  think  there  is  another  view  to  be  taken 
of  it.  Just  a  word  in  that  connection.  It  is  the  busi 
ness  of  the  college  not  only,  I  think,  to  provide  educa 
tional  facilities  to  young  men,  but  it  is  to  educate  young 
men.  That  is  a  distinction  with  a  difference.  Only  the 
other  day  I  heard  a  certain  college  man  described  as 
one  who  had  been  exposed  to  education,  but  had  n't 
caught  it.  I  think  that  is  true  of  a  good  many  of  us— 
a  good  many  of  us.  It  is  the  business  of  the  college  to 
make  education  so  contagious  that  a  man  can't  be  ex 
posed  to  it  without  catching  it.  This  kind  of  contagion 
is  found  not  in  the  beautiful  buildings  and  well- 
equipped  laboratories,  nor  in  the  library,  comprehen 
sive  as  that  may  be,  but  that  contagion  is  found  in  the 
teachers  who  teach,  and  more  especially  in  the  per 
sonality  of  the  man  who  inspires  the  teachers  and  stu 
dents  alike,  and  it  is  just  that  more  than  anything  else 
that  makes  an  educational  institution  a  real  educational 
institution. 

That  is  the  kind  of  man  we  are  here  to  honor,  a  man 
who  believes  in  God,  and  if  he  does  n't  he  is  n't  a  real 
man ;  who  believes  in  his  fellow-man ;  if  he  does  n  't,  he 
is  n't  like  the  Son  of  God;  a  man  who  speaks  what  he 
believes,  and  who  lives  what  he  speaks;  a  man  whose 
influence  is  already  felt  in  all  the  college  world,  brief 
as  has  been  his  term  of  office  thus  far ;  whose  influence 
will  be  felt,  I  prophesy,  with  increasing  power  as  the 
years  pass,  and  God  give  him  long  life— Woodrow 
Wilson,  President  of  Princeton. 


GEORGE  HAEVEY 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  WOODBOW  WILSON, 
FEBBUABY  3,  1906 

SAID  your  guest  in  his  masterful  response,  "We 
need  not  flatter  ourselves  that  we  are  a  story,  or 
even  a  plot ;  we  are  a  mere  incident. ' '  For  the  purpose 
of  this  occasion  I  think  that  I  may  go  a  step  farther. 
That  veteran  editor,  Mr.  Henry  M.  Alden,  has  deduced 
from  his  long  experience  and  intensive  knowledge  the 
conclusion  that  the  most  important  feature  of  a  story 
is  its  background.  Whether  or  not  he  would  make  the 
application  to  an  individual,  I  cannot  say.  Probably 
not.  In  any  case  there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  interest 
one  must  feel  in  the  influence  of  the  lights  and  shadows 
that  encompass  a  character.  Of  your  distinguished 
guest  as  an  educator,  as  a  scholar,  as  a  historian,  there 
are  others  here  far  better  equipped  than  I  to  speak, 
and  the  few  words  that  I  shall  venture  to  utter  will 
apply  only  to  the  minor  phases.  Back  of  the  president 
is  the  university ;  back  of  the  man  is  his  native  State  of 
Virginia.  Of  the  former  it  is  probably  sufficient  to 
recall  that  simultaneously  with  the  installation  of  its 
present  head  it  planted  itself  firmly  against  the 
tendency  to  shorten  and  make  easy  the  courses  of 
study  for  undergraduates.  Other  colleges  responded 
promptly,  but  it  was  Princeton  that  carried  the  flag, 

309 


310  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

and  it  is  to  Princeton  and  its  new  young  president  that 
the  chief  credit  is  due. 

Of  Princeton  as  a  community,  as  a  growing  load 
stone  of  philosophy,  idealism,  and  sane  comprehension 
of  affairs,  it  suffices  to  say  that  it  meets  all  require 
ments.  But  recently  we  have  had  a  notable  example. 
When,  last  summer,  a  Princeton  man,  a  famous  Prince 
ton  man,  and  as  honest  a  man  as  ever  came  out  of 
Princeton,  was  harassed  into  resigning  his  well-earned 
position  as  the  president  of  a  great  insurance  company, 
another  was  found  ready  and  fully  equipped  to  assume 
the  responsibility.  As  the  one  stepped  out,  the  other 
with  sturdy  tread  walked  in,  and  hanging  his  hat  upon 
the  hook,  he  said,  at  least  by  inference, ' '  They  say  things 
have  been  going  on  here  that  ought  not  to  have  gone  on. 
They  won't  any  more.  I  say  to  my  countrymen  that 
they  need  have  no  further  apprehension.  I  am  the 
original  square-dealer—beware  of  imitations !  "We  will 
now  proceed  to  business."  What  business  they  have 
proceeded  with  since  has  not  yet  been  made  clearly 
manifest.  The  point  is  that  Princeton  filled  the  gap. 
May  it  always  find  for  such  emergencies  a  man  of  the 
qualities  of  Grover  Cleveland. 

Woodrow  Wilson  was  born  in  an  atmosphere  sur 
charged  with  true  statesmanship.  The  fates  directed 
his  steps  in  other  paths,  but  the  effect  of  that  associa 
tion  with  the  traditions  of  his  fathers  remains.  That 
he  is  preeminent  as  a  lucid  interpreter  of  history  we 
all  know.  But  he  is  more  than  that.  One  who  reads 
understandingly  the  record  of  his  country  as  set  down 
by  him  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  with  the  belief  that 
he  is  by  instinct  a  statesman.  The  complete  grasp  of 


GEORGE  HARVEY  311 

fundamentals,  the  seemingly  unconscious  application 
of  primary  truths  to  changing  conditions,  the  breadth 
of  thought  and  reason  manifested  on  the  pages  of  his 
books,  constitute  as  clear  evidence  of  sagacity,  worthy 
of  the  best  and  noblest  of  Virginia's  traditions,  as  was 
that  truly  eloquent  appeal  which  last  year  he  addressed 
to  his  brethren  of  the  South,  to  rise  manfully  from  the 
ashes  of  prejudice  and  lethargy  and  come  back  into 
their  own. 

It  is  that  type  of  man  that  we  shall  soon,  if  indeed  we 
do  not  already,  need  in  public  life.  Nobody  would 
think  of  criticizing  the  general  reformation  of  the 
human  race  now  going  on  by  executive  decree.  But 
progress  in  that  direction  is  making  so  rapidly  that  the 
great  work  itself  is  sure  soon  to  be  accomplished,  of 
course  to  the  complete  satisfaction  of  all  concerned. 

"When  that  time  shall  be  reached,  the  country  will 
need  at  least  a  short  breathing-spell  for  what  the  phy 
sicians  term  a  period  of  perfect  rest.  That  day,  not 
now  so  far  distant,  will  call  for  a  man  who  combines  the 
activities  of  the  present  with  the  sober  influences  of  the 
past.  If  one  could  be  found  who  should  unite  in  his 
personality,  in  addition  to  these  qualities,  the  instinct 
of  true  statesmanship,  as  the  effect  of  early  environ 
ment  and  the  no  less  valuable  capacity  of  practical 
application  as  the  result  of  subsequent  endeavors  in 
another  field,  the  ideal  would  be  at  hand.  Such  a  man 
it  is  my  firm  belief,  and  I  venture  earnestly  to  insist,  is 
to  be  found  in  Woodrow  Wilson  of  Virginia  and  New 
Jersey. 

As  one  of  a  considerable  number  of  Democrats 
who  have  become  tired  of  voting  Republican  tickets, 


312  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

it  is  with,  a  sense  almost  of  rapture  that  I  contemplate 
even  the  remotest  possibility  of  casting  a  ballot  for  the 
president  of  Princeton  University  to  become  President 
of  the  United  States. 

In  any  case,  since  opportunities  in  national  political 
conventions  are  rare,  and  usually  preempted,  to  the 
enlightened  and  enlightening  Lotos  Club  I  submit  the 
nomination. 


ST.  CLAIE  McKELWAY 

AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  DECEMBEE  15,  1906 

I  HAVE  spoken  often  enough  to  the  Lotos  Club,  when 
others  have  been  honored,  to  know  what  to  expect 
from  those  who  will  follow  me.  They  are  the  tar- 
geteers,  I  am  the  target.  For  what  I  am  about  to 
receive  from  them,  may  the  Lord  make  me  truly 
pachydermatous!  In  what  I  shall  say  to  them  before 
they  can  draw  the  long  bow  or  the  short  gun  on  me,  I 
shall  be  sincere  as  always,  but,  not  as  always,  brief. 
Fewer  editors  than  men  of  other  callings  have  received 
the  approbation  of  this  club.  In  my  memory,  I  recall 
among  them  Murat  Halstead,  the  late  Charles  A. 
Dana,  and  Whitelaw  Reid.  Mr.  Reid  could  have  been 
received  either  as  an  editor,  or  a  publisher,  or  a -dip 
lomat.  Mr.  Halstead  was  received  in  the  character  of 
an  eminent  person  who  had  just  adventured  on  Brook 
lyn.  The  representative  position  of  the  late  Charles  A. 
Dana,  in  authorship,  in  journalism,  and  in  public  ser 
vice,  we  all  know. 

I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  speaking  at  the  dinners 
to  them,  as  well  as  at  dinners  to  many  others  here,  and 
in  my  capacity  of  targeteer  I  can  be  called  experienced. 
I  trust  I  shall  have  the  necessary  finesse  or  fortitude 
for  the  other  role.  I  can  stand  blame  or  badinage,  for 
I  know  that  those  who  may  indulge  it  here  against  me, 

313 


314  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

while  they  may  be  sincere  if  they  know  me,  can  be 
endured  and  excused  if  they  do  not.  Any,  however, 
who  indulge  in  praise  or  over-praise  will  really  em 
barrass  me,  because  I  have  that  excellent  quality  of 
simplicity  which  can  feel  or  feign  surprise  or  regret 
when  praise  is  uttered  before  folks.  To  be  seen  makes 
me  assume  a  modesty  which  I  have  not.  Publicity 
requires  us  to  affect  wonder  and  disclaimer  under  praise, 
whether  we  really  feel  it  or  not.  It  is  with  tribute  as 
it  is  with  sensitiveness.  Every  man  says  he  is  not 
sensitive,  and  is.  Every  man  says  he  does  not  like  to 
be  praised  by  others,  before  others,  but  he  does  like 
it.  He  likes  it  especially  when  he  knows  it  is  deserved 
and  true.  His  affectation  of  dislike  of  it  is  the  tribute 
he  pays  to  good  form  and  to  good  pose.  The  abrupt  and 
carefully  advertised  candor  of  Mark  Twain  in  saying 
that  he  wished  he  could  go  around  in  Adamic  costume 
fools  no  Missourian  who  went  in  to  swim  with  him 
—and  he  and  I  went  to  school  in  the  same  Missouri 
County. 

The  naked  truth,  if  told  about  him,  and  it  shall  not 
be  told  here,  would  be  very  different  from  what  he 
affected  to  tell  about  himself  in  "Washington  the  other 
day.  An  Adamic  photograph  of  him,  if  copied  right, 
would  never  be  copyrighted  in  any  language  except  the 
profane. 

But  now  as  to  those  men  about  whom  I  have  spoken 
or  at  whom  I  have  shot  at  other  Lotos  dinners.  Their 
difference  from  myself  was  marked.  Several  of  them 
were  poets.  There  were  both  rhyme  and  reason  in 
dinners  to  them.  Several  of  them  were  fictionists.  I 
never  told  a  lie  in  my  life  to  which  I  did  not  confess— 


ST.   GLAIR  McKELWAY  315 

the  moment  it  was  found  out.  Several  of  them  were 
dramatists,  but  their  real  character  here  outclassed  all 
their  assumed  characters,  and  we  honored  them  as 
men,  not  as  actors  or  managers,  and  accepted  compli 
mentary  chairs  and  boxes  from  them  with  the  know 
ledge  that  their  courtesy  was  like  the  quality  of  mercy, 
which  blesses  him  who  gives  and  him  who  takes.  Others 
were  sculptors,  painters,  soldiers,  ambassadors,  jurists, 
singers,  explorers,  and  critics,  and  not  a  few  were 
simply  jolly  good  fellows,  as,  indeed,  all  of  them  were 
declared  to  be  at  the  close  of  every  dinner. 

The  Lotos,  since  its  foundation,  has  felt  the  pulse  of 
the  times  surrounding  it  and  has  prescribed  the  right 
artistic  regimen  and  the  sound  ethical  tonic  of  each 
occasion  it  has  confronted.  The  present  appeals  to  the 
club  with  moral  and  marked  significance.  Our  nation 
has  a  spelling  reformer,  a  political  genius,  and  the 
recipient  of  the  Nobel  prize  for  his  work  as  a  peace 
maker,  for  its  Chief  Magistrate.  Our  State  will  soon 
have  a  reformer  and  a  jurist  for  its  governor.  We 
have  had  worthy  and  ordinary  Presidents.  I  doubt 
whether,  for  a  long  while  to  come,  we  shall  have  merely 
an  ordinary  President.  A  high  stamp  generally  im 
presses  more  than  a  short  period.  Cleveland,  McKin- 
ley,  and  Roosevelt  have  preserved  the  White  House 
from  mediocrity  or  chicanery  for  many  a  year  to  come, 
as  well  as  for  their  own  time.  Governor-elect  Hughes 
should  be  an  influence  to  hold  his  successors,  for  years 
to  come,  to  character,  courage,  and  capacity.  The  men 
who  tread  the  heights  of  principle  often  reach  the  sum 
mits  of  achievement. 

Any   department   of   human   endeavor   measurably 


316  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

affects  every  other.  The  period  of  political  reform 
draws  art  to  higher  levels.  It  inspires  literature  to 
the  study  of  great  examples  and  to  the  aspiration  of 
higher  ideals.  It  should  stir  journalism  to  the  com 
mendation  of  the  hopeful  and  the  clean  in  politics  and 
in  life.  No  great  result  is  solitary.  Diffused  intel 
ligence  makes  heroism,  whether  moral  or  material,  both 
a  passion  and  a  force. 

Our  republic  and  our  time  are  peculiarly  favorable 
to  this.  Only  blatant  or  mediocre  journalism  magni 
fies  merely  material  prosperity.  The  better  journalism 
makes  prosperity  spell  opportunity,  and  opportunity 
obligation.  It  prescribes  to  that  journalism  the  praise 
of  principles,  and  not  merely  the  cheap  praise  of  pos 
session.  We  are  asking  to-day,  not  what  men  have 
amassed,  but  how  and  where  did  they  get  it;  not  how 
much  one  holds  for  himself,  but  of  how  much  will  he 
let  go  for  the  uplift  of  humanity.  It  was  a  poet  whom 
this  club  honored  once  who  said:  "All  that  we  hold  in 
our  dead  right  hand  is  what  we  have  given  away." 
And  to  the  living,  the  obligation  to  account  for  their 
stewardship,  while  living,  is  made  apparent  on  every 
hand.  That  which  must  be  pardoned  to  the  spirit  of 
altruism  in  the  national  heart  is  due  to  the  sense  of 
shame  and  of  wrong  in  the  national  conscience. 

The  temporary— it  may  be  the  permanent— effect  of 
recent  disclosures  puts,  to  be  frank,  all  wealth  under 
inquisition.  There  is  no  hostility  toward  wealth  hon 
estly  gotten.  There  is  respect  for  it,  enhanced  if  at 
least  its  unearned  increment  is  used  for  mankind.  But 
of  itself,  and  for  itself  alone,  wealth  is  no  guarantee  of 
standing,  and  is  little  welcome  as  a  helper,  even  of 


ST.  GLAIR  McKELWAY  317 

good  causes.  A  man  is  what  he  is  and  what  he  does, 
not  what  he  has.  This  is  the  club  of  clubs  for  this 
gospel.  Givers  have  here  been  more  honored  than 
getters.  It  is  this  which  makes  the  club  not  merely  an 
authority  on  art,  but  for  ethics  and  for  humanity 
within  the  republic  and  beyond  it.  Your  occasions 
have  shown  this.  Many  of  your  members  have  exem 
plified  this  by  service  to  letters  and  to  the  state. 

The  Lotos,  as  I  remember,  was  formed  by  men  in  the 
professions  or  in  the  arts,  for  finer  purposes  than 
conventional  clubs  could  easily  subserve.  The  Lotos 
drew  those  who  rated  sentiment  above  sordidity, 
achievement  above  assumption,  learning  above  wealth. 
The  Lotos  soon  let  in  such  business  men  as  were  them 
selves  students  and  lovers  of  humor  and  of  wit,  of 
literature  and  of  art.  These  men  enabled  the  club  to 
capitalize  its  ethical  and  art  advantages  on  the  side 
of  solvency,  as  well  as  of  literature  and  of  art.  The 
comforts  of  prosperity  were  not  incompatible  with 
ideals  never  lowered  or  lost.  No  other  organization  in 
New  York  has  been  so  perfectly  equipped  for  Lotos 
purposes  as  the  Lotos  itself.  All  other  organizations 
concede  the  unique  competency  of  this  club  for  its  rare 
role,  and  the  debt  of  the  city  to  the  club  for  its  high 
functions  is  one  which  every  man  of  affairs  or  of  senti 
ment  well  knows  will  draw  an  interest  of  gratitude  and 
of  pride  for  as  long  as  New  York  is  the  metropolis  of 
the  higher  values.  They  are  the  values  which  can  be 
infallibly  invested  so  as  to  secure  the  best  returns, 
whether  this  side  or  beyond  the  stars. 


HOEACE  PORTER 

AT  THE  DINNEK  TO  ST.  CLAIE  McKELWAY, 
DECEMBEE  15,  1906 

NOW  that  the  fireworks  are  over  and  the  stick  is 
about  to  come  down,  Mr.  President  and  fellow- 
members  of  the  Lotos  Club,  I  will  say  that  I  remained 
some  time  abroad  feeding  at  the  public  crib,  but  to 
relieve  the  strain  upon  our  taxpayers  I  thought  I 
would  come  home  and  feed  occasionally  at  the  Lotos 
crib.  It  is  a  joy  to  us  all,  our  main  joy  to-night,  that 
we  have  with  us  this  distinguished  representative  of 
the  press.  I  notice  particularly  that  public  speakers 
are  always  genuinely  happy  when  they  are  able  to  say 
they  have  the  press  with  them.  I  have  been  opposed 
to  many  things  connected  with  these  Brooklyn  bridges, 
but  I  have  become  reconciled  to  them  this  evening,  be 
cause  they  have  furnished  the  quickest  means  of  bring 
ing  our  good  friend  over  to  this  quarter  of  Greater 
New  York.  But  suppose  these  bridges  had  been  builded 
at  an  earlier  date,  what  might  not  have  happened? 
When  the  Pilgrims  came  to  Brooklyn  it  has  never  been 
altogether  decided  in  history  where  they  landed, 
whether  on  Plymouth  Rock  or  at  Plymouth  Church. 
But  from  the  Forefathers'  banquet  on  December  21,  it 
is  reasonable  to  conclude  that  they  landed  in  Brooklyn, 
and,  as  they  have  selected  December  22  for  the  Fore- 

318 


HORACE  PORTER  319 

fathers'  dinner  in  New  York,  that  it  took  them  twenty- 
four  hours  to  ferry  across  the  East  River. 

Suppose  the  bridge  had  been  built.  They  would  im 
mediately  have  come  over,  without  tarrying  in  Brook 
lyn,  and  there  would  have  been  a  conflict  raging  to  this 
day  as  to  which  night  should  be  selected  by  Brooklyn 
and  Manhattan  for  the  Forefathers'  dinner. 

Suppose  at  the  battle  of  Flatbush,  when  Washington 
was  defeated  and  retreated  to  New  York,  where  he  was 
saved  because  there  was  a  great  storm  in  the  East 
River  and  the  British  were  not  able  to  pursue  him;  if 
there  had  been  a  bridge  built  at  that  time,  and  the  traffic 
had  not  been  too  congested,  the  British  would  have 
followed  on  the  heels  of  Washington,  the  Continental 
Army  would  have  been  destroyed,  and  America  would 
have  been  robbed  of  every  prospect  of  liberty. 

We  are  glad  to  meet  such  a  distinguished  represen 
tative  of  journalism  here  to-night,  and  I  am  glad  that 
I  have  been  placed  so  near  him,  for  I  always  try  to  gain 
something  of  the  spark  of  intellect  that  passes  from 
him.  When  I  was  coming  home  from  the  French  ma 
noeuvres  one  day  I  saw  a  Zouave  soldier  trudging  along 
the  road,  and  he  had  that  little  red  fez  stuck  on  the 
corner  of  his  head.  I  said  to  him,  "My  man,  what 
accounts  for  that  little  red  cap  sticking  so  closely  on 
the  corner  of  your  head  ? ' '  He  replied,  ' '  Proximity  to 
intellect,  m'sieuV  I  have  been  in  proximity  for  a 
time  to  intellect  to-night. 

We  admire  our  friend  because  he  has  written  in  the 
interest  of  truth  and  justice,  and  written  seriously. 
He  has  not  written,  as  some  writers  have,  seeming  to 
have  only  one  ambition,  to  place  their  writings  largely 


320  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

in  the  hands  of  the  people,  so  that  the  proofs  of  their 
mendacity  may  descend  to  posterity.  Our  friend  has 
had  the  happy  faculty  of  duplicating  himself  and 
doubling  his  usefulness,  because,  like  other  editors,  he 
uses  the  pronoun  "we"  to  represent  an  individual. 
That  is  entirely  correct.  John  Phoenix  is  authority  for 
saying  that  there  are  only  three  personages  in  the 
world  who  have  the  right  to  use  that  plural  pronoun 
"we"— a  crowned  head,  the  editor  of  a  newspaper,  and 
a  man  with  a  tapeworm. 

The  most  terrific  weapon  that  the  journalist  uses  is 
a  blue  pencil.  There  is  something  depressing  in  the 
color.  I  remember  when  Bunner  of  Life  came  to  me 
one  day.  He  was  very  sad.  He  had  written  an  article 
for  a  Sunday  paper  on  the  trip  he  had  made  to  that 
interesting  quarter  of  London  known  as  Petticoat 
Lane.  He  said  they  blue-penciled  him ;  that  the  editor 
said  that  there  were  a  great  many  lady  readers  of  that 
paper,  and  they  could  not  use  in  print  "petticoat." 
Bunner  said,  "What  are  you  going  to  do  with  people 
like  that?"  I  said,  "Bunner,  I  would  try  to  compro 
mise  the  matter  with  them.  Tell  them  that  in  the  in 
terest  of  modesty  you  are  willing  that  they  should 
shorten  the  petticoat,  but  not  to  remove  it  altogether." 

Now,  the  press  gets  us  into  many  a  scrape,  and  some 
times  it  helps  us  out  of  a  scrape.  I  remember  on 
a  political  campaign  up  in  one  of  the  northern  counties 
of  the  State,  a  good  many  years  ago,  Judge  Davis  was 
to  make  the  principal  speech  for  the  Republicans.  The 
Democrats  had  already  corraled  the  town  hall,  and  we 
had  to  take  the  Methodist  Church.  The  judge  was 
tired,  and  said  that  he  had  to  have  a  stimulant,  that  he 


HORACE  PORTER  321 

could  not  make  a  long  speech,  that  he  was  very  much 
fatigued,  and  he  wanted  some  whiskey  or  brandy. 
They  said,  "Why,  that  will  never  do;  they  are  all 
temperance  people  here,  and  it  will  never  do  in  a 
church."  Then  came  forward  the  ingenious  member 
of  the  Republican  committee  who  said,  "I  know  what 
to  do  to  fix  it.  I  will  go  out  and  get  a  pitcher  of  gin, 
and  they  cannot  tell  that  from  water  when  he  pours  it 
out."  And  it  was  placed  upon  the  platform.  The 
judge  had  already  begun  to  speak,  and  before  long- 
there  were  some  ladies  in  the  front  seats,  and  there  was 
a  woman  with  a  baby  in  her  arms.  The  baby  cried  and 
she  rushed  forward  and  seized  the  pitcher  and  poured 
out  some  gin  and  gave  it  to  the  baby.  The  baby  rolled 
up  its  eyes  and  took  a  conniption  fit  and  yelled  bloody 
murder,  and  the  mother  tasted  the  liquor  and  rushed 
out  of  the  church. 

I  said,  "We  are  simply  gone  now.  You  can  see  that 
Democratic  paper  describing  it  to-morrow  morning, 
and  you  can  imagine  the  headlines."  But  the  Repub 
lican  editor  was  there,  fortunately,  and  he  said,  "I 
will  beat  it."  The  next  morning  large  headlines  ap 
peared  in  the  Republican  paper,  reading:  "Dastardly 
attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Democrats  to  poison  the 
chief  speaker  at  the  Republican  meeting,  endangering 
the  lives  of  an  honest  woman  and  an  innocent  child. ' ' 

Now,  journalism  has  changed  vastly  since  I  first 
knew  anything  about  it.  I  remember  as  a  boy,  when 
things  took  the  belligerent  shape,  and  every  man  that 
had  been  attacked  was  seen  marching  for  the  sanctum, 
going  along  like  a  walking  arsenal.  The  editor  gener 
ally  wrote  with  a  bowie-knife  down  his  back,  a  pen  in 


322  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

one  hand  and  a  revolver  in  the  other.  To-day,  these 
men  would  seek  their  rights  at  law.  Taylor  of  Boston 
is  authority  for  the  scene  that  occurred  when  a  man 
came  in  there  with  a  large  club  in  his  hand.  The  edi 
tor  was  rather  an  athlete,  and  he  jumped  up,  turned 
the  man  around,  and  shoved  him  out  of  the  room  to 
the  head  of  the  stairs,  and  then  planted  a  kick  on  his 
anatomy,  and  the  man  landed  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs 
and  lay  there  stiff  and  cold,  with  his  head  bleeding. 
The  editor  rushed  down  the  stairs  and  felt  the  man's 
heart,  to  see  if  by  any  chance  it  was  still  beating.  In  a 
few  moments  the  man  arose  and  walked  out,  and  at  the 
door  he  turned  and  shook  his  fist  at  the  editor,  and 
said,  "You  will  hear  from  me."  "Thank  God!"  said 
the  editor ;  "  I  thought  I  never  should. ' ' 

Journalism,  above  all  other  things,  has  kept  pace 
with  the  progress  and  invention  of  modern  times.  You 
remember,  when  steam-heating  was  introduced  some 
years  ago  into  New  York,  that  the  name  of  the  Fireside 
Companion  was  changed  to  the  Christian  Register. 
Now,  I  learned  a  little  about  journalism  when  I  was 
secretary  to  President  Grant  at  the  White  House.  Of 
course  we  had  an  organ  published  there  in  Washing 
ton — one  of  the  principal  ingredients  in  recipes  to 
make  a  perfect  administration  is  an  organ,  and  that 
implies  that  there  must  be  a  crank  connected  with  it. 
They  thought  then  that  truth  lay  at  the  bottom  of  a 
well,  and  that  it  required  a  crank  to  bring  it  to  the  sur 
face;  and  that  crank  used  to  manage  the  organ  when 
the  principal  was  away.  If  he  turned  the  crank  the 
wrong  way,  he  changed  the  policy  and  set  the  adminis 
tration  back  seven  years  in  politics  and  fifteen  years  in 


HORACE  PORTER  323 

religion.  The  editor  of  that  organ  was  a  man  who 
believed  in  the  proper  distribution  of  labor.  He  had 
a  man  employed  to  write  the  articles,  and  he  stood  the 
libel  suits,  which  numbered  about  eight  a  week  then. 

One  day  he  came  to  the  White  House.  I  said  to  him, 
"I  see  you  are  sued  again."  He  said,  "Yes;  I  was 
never  so  surprised  in  my  life  as  when  this  old  preacher 
got  mad."  I  said,  "What  did  you  say  about  him?" 
and  he  replied,  "I  did  n't  say  much  of  anything.  I 
only  said  he  was  a  hypocrite  unmasked,  a  wolf  in 
sheep's  clothing,  and  a  whited  sepulcher;  and  the 
damned  old  fool  got  mad. ' ' 

My  good  friend  came  to  Paris  when  I  was  there,  and 
he  brought  his  wife  with  him,  and  she  said  she  was 
going  to  study  French  by  reading  the  journals.  So 
she  bought  them  all,  and  filled  the  rooms  with  them, 
while  she  talked  all  the  time,  and  he  could  n't  get  in  a 
word  edgeways.  One  day  she  said  to  him,  "Do  you 
know,  I  think  I  can  think  in  French. ' '  And  he  replied, 
"I  'd  thank  God  if  you  'd  let  me  hear  you  do  it 
awhile. ' ' 

Well,  now,  McKelway  there,  is,  I  am  sure,  so  irre 
proachable,  that  I  can't  do  any  more  than  repeat  the 
remark  made  by  a  young  English  clergyman  who  came 
to  Paris  and  spent  his  time  for  two  weeks  in  making 
the  rounds  and  seeing  the  sights,  and  he  appeared  to 
be  attracted  by  the  gaiety  of  that  capital  at  the  end  of 
that  time,  and  said,  "I  only  wish  I  had  struck  this 
town  before  I  gave  my  heart  to  the  Lord. ' ' 

But,  my  friends,  we  must  look  seriously  at  the  power 
of  journalism.  It  is  a  gigantic  power  either  for  good 
or  for  evil.  It  is  our  Fourth  Estate.  The  nation,  the 


324  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

governments  nowadays  seem  to  initiate  very  little,  the 
press  very  much ;  for  it  keeps  its  finger  on  the  popular 
pulse,  and  many  of  the  greatest  measures  that  we  have 
had  successfully  carried  through  in  this  country  have 
been  initiated  by  the  press.  And  we  admire  our  friend 
here  because  he  has  always  been  as  independent  as  the 
air  itself.  Nothing  ever  controlled  him  but  his  own 
conscience  and  his  own  sense  of  right.  He  has  always 
had  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  and  has  never  taken 
counsel  of  his  fears ;  he  has  always  hewed  in  the  line  of 
right,  let  the  chips  fall  where  they  may.  He  has  fear 
lessly  unearthed  fraud  and  probed  corruption,  even  in 
the  highest  places,  without  shrinking,  but  he  has  not 
considered  it  necessary  for  journalism  to  infect  the 
community  with  the  worst  of  all  diseases,  hysteria. 

He  has  abided  by  the  words  of  Bailey:  "The  worst 
way  to  reform  the  world  is  by  condemning  it."  Justice 
has  been  at  the  bottom  of  everything  he  has  done  and 
everything  he  has  said.  He  has  heeded  the  words  of 
the  writer  who  said,  "Knowledge  without  justice  is 
cunning  rather  than  wisdom. ' ' 

But  we  greet  him  here  to-night  not  only  because  he 
is  a  great,  honored  representative  of  modern  journal 
ism,  or  because  he  has  been  a  great  educator,  traveler, 
student,  a  graceful  orator,  and  a  brilliant  writer,  but 
we  greet  him  here  because  we  love  and  honor  him  as 
a  personal  friend.  When  he  comes  into  this  club  all 
doors  are  open  and  all  arms  are  extended  to  him,  and 
all  hearts  are  warm  to  him  with  the  glow  of  abiding 
affection.  There  is  something  in  that  word  friendship, 
that  dearest  sentiment  in  our  nature,  which  always 
touches  us  deeply.  You  cannot  describe  it.  It  is  made 


HORACE  PORTER  325 

up  of  a  great  many  little  things,  sometimes  of  similar 
characteristics  in  individuals  and  sometimes  just  the 
contrary,  different  temperaments  which  offset  each 
other,  and  we  cannot  describe  what  we  mean  by  having 
it,  but  we  feel  that  it  is  good ;  we  call  it  friendship  and 
we  thank  God  for  it.  And  we  have  seen  with  him,  in 
our  contact  with  him,  that  friendship,  that  plant  which 
is  the  hardiest  in  our  gardens,  that  friendship  which 
touches  and  smooths  and  strengthens  the  declining 
years  on  earth.  He  has  gained  a  title-deed  to  honor 
from  which  he  can  never  be  deposed,  and  we  trust  that 
the  evening  of  his  days  may  be  as  peaceful  and  as 
happy  as  the  whole  of  his  brilliant  career  has  been  use 
ful,  honorable,  and  noble. 


EOBEET  E.  PEAEY 

(COMMANDER  UNITED  STATES  NAVY) 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOE,  FEBRUARY  2,  1907 

IT  is  unnecessary  for  me,  President  Lawrence,  to  tell 
you  how  much  and  how  deeply  I  appreciate  your 
kindly  words,  how  absolutely  at  home  I  feel  by  your 
side,  and  particularly  in  the  precincts  of  the  Lotos 
Club.  I  recall  very  distinctly  several  similar  pleasant 
occasions  here. 

Many  of  you  are  aware  of  the  fact  that  during  the 
last  eighteen  months  a  new  degree  has  been  added,  and 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  have  been  placed  in  the  lead  in 
the  international  race  for  the  pole.  But  that  is  not  the 
only  result  of  the  last  eighteen  months  of  work,  for  new 
lands  have  been  discovered,  and  new  and  valuable 
scientific  and  geographical  information  and  data  have 
been  obtained. 

The  point  of  view  of  Mr.  Jesup  and  his  associates  in 
the  Peary  Arctic  Club  has  been  that  arctic  work  to-day 
is  a  simple  business  proposition,  and  should  combine  in 
intimate  coordination  two  objects:  the  attainment  of 
the  pole  as  a  matter  of  record  and  national  prestige, 
and  the  securing  of  all  possible  geographic,  hydro- 
graphic,  and  other  scientific  information  from  the 
unknown  regions  about  the  pole.  And  since  the  govern 
ment  has  not  considered  it  advisable  to  undertake  the 
work,  the  club  gladly  assumed  it,  and  shares  the  result- 

326 


I 


ROBERT  E.  PEARY  327 

ing  honor,  whatever  there  may  be,  and  the  scientific 
material,  with  the  country  and  its  museums. 

The  steamer  Roosevelt,  built  especially  for  arctic 
work,  sailed,  in  July,  1905,  on  her  northern  voyage. 
This  ship  was  built  from  American  timber  from  Maine, 
New  Hampshire,  and  other  States;  built  in  an  Ameri 
can  shipyard  and  fitted  with  American  machinery.  The 
ship,  one  hundred  and  eight  feet  long  and  thirty-eight 
feet  beam,  was  fundamentally  better  fitted  for  the  work 
than  any  ship  that  had  ever  gone  north,  and  was  in 
reality  a  steamer  with  auxiliary  sail-power. 

We  followed  the  ordinary  itinerary  to  Sydney,  Cape 
Breton,  and  then  we  beat  our  way  up  the  west  coast  to 
Grantland,  where  we  took  on  board  the  Esquimaux. 
There  is  a  little  tribe  of  Esquimaux  who  are  the  most 
northern  people  in  the  world,  and  they  form  one  of  the 
most  important  adjuncts  in  arctic  work.  I  knew  their 
capabilities,  and  so  I  was  able  to  select  the  pick  and 
flower  of  the  entire  tribe.  These  men,  with  their  wives, 
their  children,  and  their  dogs  and  sledges — in  fact,  all 
their  belongings— we  took  on  board  the  ship,  to  act  as 
drivers  and  carriers. 

Off  Cape  Sabine  we  had  eighteen  days  of  incessant 
battle,  a  battle  of  a  kind  many  of  you  cannot  under 
stand,  using  the  ship  as  a  huge  battering-ram  and  driv 
ing  it  at  the  ice.  Nobody  at  this  dinner  can  imagine 
what  that  work  was.  After  eighteen  days  we  managed 
to  reach  Cape  Sabine  at  last,  five  hundred  statute  miles 
from  the  pole  itself. 

Here  I  followed  the  routine  of  every  arctic  explorer, 
a  routine  which  is  compelled  by  the  sequence  of  the 
arctic  seasons.  A  ship  goes  north  one  summer  in 


328  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

August  or  September,  and  goes  into  winter  quarters 
before  the  months  of  darkness  set  in,  when  nothing  can 
be  done ;  and  perhaps  I  can  bring  that  home  clearly  to 
you  when  I  say  that  the  sun  set  for  us  on  the  12th  of 
October  and  rose  again  on  the  6th  of  March.  How 
many  of  you  can  really  bring  that  home  to  yourselves  ? 
What  would  it  be  right  here  in  New  York  if  the  sun 
were  to  set  in  October  and  not  rise  again  until  March? 
That  winter  night  is  really  the  only  real  source  of 
trouble  in  arctic  work.  Ninety-nine  out  of  a  hundred 
people  have  the  impression  that  the  cold  is  the  great 
trouble ;  but  when  you  are  up  there,  and  dressed  for  it 
in  fur  clothing,  and  properly  fed,  the  cold  at  seventy- 
seven  degrees  below  zero  is  not  nearly  as  disagreeable 
as  is  the  damp,  raw  cold  that  we  have  in  New  York 
every  winter. 

And  the  last  five  hundred  miles  of  that  journey  of 
only  three  thousand  miles  from  New  York  to  the  pole 
must  be  accomplished  with  dogs  and  sledges;  that 
is  inevitable.  The  winter  quarters  of  the  Roosevelt 
were  farther  north  than  the  winter  quarters  of  any 
other  arctic  ship  except  one,  the  Fram. 

We  went  west  along  the  coast,  parallel  with  it  for 
some  sixty  miles;  we  made  some  eighty  miles  when  we 
came  to  a  break  or  lead  in  the  ice  which  was  impassable. 
We  sent  two  parties  back  for  additional  supplies,  and 
sat  down  to  wait  for  the  lead  to  freeze  or  close  over; 
and  then,  as  we  had  some  low  temperatures,  forty-five 
to  sixty  below  zero,  we  put  light  loads  on  the  sledges 
and  crossed.  Then  from  the  northern  side  of  the  lead 
we  made  three  good  marches  north,  and  were  stopped 
by  a  blizzard  which  set  the  ice  in  motion.  Here  we 


ROBERT  E.  PEARY  329 

built  a  hut  for  shelter,  and  one  night  we  had  to  get  out 
in  the  storm  and  build  another.  The  ice-pack  during 
this  storm  drifted  eastward  seventy  miles,  and  you  will 
naturally  recognize  that  we  were  cut  off  from  our  sup 
plies  and  the  party  was  larger  than  we  had  supplies 
for,  and  that  whatever  was  done  had  to  be  done  by  a 
quick  dash  if  conditions  proved  favorable  to  enable  us 
to  make  a  record. 

We  therefore  abandoned  everything  that  was  not 
absolutely  necessary,  and  made  a  start.  We  put  our 
best  efforts  to  setting  a  pace,  and  the  first  march  of 
thirty  miles  was  made  in  ten  hours ;  for  the  most  part, 
I  set  the  pace  in  the  lead.  On  the  second  march  we 
overtook  one  of  the  parties  I  had  sent  in  advance,  wait 
ing  beside  a  lead.  They  immediately  hitched  up  and 
joined  us,  and  we  kept  on  with  our  small  party  of  seven 
men  and  six  teams  until  the  21st  of  April,  when  we 
halted  in  the  middle  of  the  day  to  take  observations, 
which  showed  that  we  had  reached  latitude  87.6  north, 
which  at  present  is  the  nearest  approach  to  the  north 
pole.  Nansen  had  previously  reached  86.13,  and 
Abruzzi  reached  86.33,  but  both  these  points  were  prac 
tically  at  the  opposite  side  of  the  pole  from  me.  Per 
haps  it  will  bring  home  to  you  more  clearly  the 
narrowing  of  the  record  when  I  tell  you  that  with  the 
pole  here  (indicating),  and  my  own  point  here,  the 
distance  is  only  374  nautical  miles.  It  is  true  that  we 
had  attained  a  record— we  could  n't  have  come  back 
without  it— but  the  feeling  that  that  record  fell  so  far 
short  of  the  splendid  thing  on  which  I  had  set  my 
heart  for  years,  and  for  which  I  had  been  almost  lit 
erally  straining  my  life  out,  was  one  of  most  intense 


330  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

disappointment.  But  you  can  possibly  imagine  where 
my  heart  was  when  I  looked  at  the  skeleton  figures  of 
the  few  remaining  dogs  and  remembered  the  drifting 
ice  and  the  big  lead.  I  felt  that  I  had  cut  the  margin 
just  as  close  as  it  could  possibly  be  done,  and  from  that 
point  we  turned  back. 

Before  we  turned,  however,  my  flags  were  hoisted  on 
the  highest  pinnacle  near  us,  and  a  little  beyond  this  I 
erected  a  cairn  and  in  it  I  left  a  bottle  containing  a 
brief  record  and  a  piece  of  the  silk  flag— the  flag  that 
hangs  over  there,  gentlemen,  and  which  is  the  same  one 
I  have  carried  for  six  years.  Had  our  provisions  lasted, 
and  had  we  been  able  to  keep  up  a  pace  of  twenty  miles 
a  day,  in  ten  to  twelve  days  we  should  have  been  at  our 
goal. 

The  journey  back  to  our  last  camp  was  one  of  exceed 
ing  difficulty,  inasmuch  as  the  drifting  snow  was  con 
stantly  blown  into  our  faces,  stinging  like  red-hot 
needles;  and  when  we  reached  the  camp  we  were  all 
nearly  completely  done  up.  There  we  slept  one  full 
sleep,  and  it  was  many  days  before  we  got  another. 

Finally  we  reached  Storm  Camp,  and  here  we  were 
detained  twenty-four  hours  by  a  howling  storm.  The 
igloos  here  had  been  turned  into  ice  grottoes,  but  they 
proved  a  welcome  refuge.  From  here  we  picked  our 
way  with  indescribable  toil,  and  constantly  using  the 
pickax,  to  the  big  lead. 

Five  days  and  nights  we  spent  by  this  lead,  and  on 
the  fifth  day  my  scouting  party  of  Esquimaux  came  in 
and  reported  that  there  was  some  young  ice  forming 
across  the  lead  a  few  miles  off,  which  might  support  us 
on  our  snowshoes  over  the  rather  more  than  two  miles 


ROBERT  E.  PEARY  331 

to  the  southern  side.  We  wasted  no  time  in  getting  to 
the  place,  and  each  man  tied  his  snowshoes  on  carefully 
and  we  started  across  in  skirmishing  order,  well  ex 
tended.  I  had  five-foot  snowshoes  and  the  others  had 
four-foot  ones.  There  was  a  distance  of  fifty  feet  be 
tween  us  as  we  walked  across  the  tough  young  ice, 
which  trembled  and  bent  and  yielded  before  us  at  every 
step.  We  could  n't  stop,  and  we  could  n't  lift  the 
snowshoes,  they  had  to  be  carefully  slid  or  pushed 
along.  Never  again  do  I  care  for  any  similar  experi 
ence.  At  last  we  reached  the  southern  side  of  the  lead, 
and  the  sigh  of  relief  of  the  two  men  nearest  me  was 
distinctly  audible. 

Well,  we  were  safely  over,  so  we  camped  for  a  while 
and  had  a  grand  dinner — just  of  dog — and  then  we 
were  ready  again  to  keep  on  to  the  southward  over  ice 
that  seemed  almost  impassable,  and  some  of  the  pin 
nacles  of  which  were  the  size  of  the  dome  of  the  Capitol 
in  Washington,  ranging  from  that  down  to  a  cobble 
stone.  For  the  next  three  marches  the  going  was  fright 
ful,  and  then  it  began  to  improve.  I  made  out  the 
summits  of  distant  Greenland  with  my  glass,  and  soon 
we  were  under  the  shelter  of  Cape  Morris  Jesup,  and 
there  was  no  longer  any  danger  of  drifting  around  it. 
On  May  12  we  came  out  on  the  ice-foot  at  Cape  Neu- 
meyer,  for  I  was  familiar  with  this  coast,  and  I  knew 
that  we  were  likely  to  find  game  there.  Within  an  hour 
we  had  four  arctic  hares,  weighing  from  nine  to  ten 
pounds  each,  and  the  meat  was  more  than  delicious. 
Just  before  reaching  the  shore  we  crossed  a  fresh  sledge- 
track,  and  for  a  moment  I  thought  it  was  a  party  look 
ing  for  me,  but  a  closer  inspection  showed  that  it  was  a 


332  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

light  sledge  drawn  by  three  weak  dogs,  and  four  weak 
men  walking  very  slowly.  As  soon  as  we  had  slept  a 
few  hours  I  sent  some  of  the  Esquimaux  to  find  out, 
and  the  next  day  they  came  back  with  Clark  and  three 
Esquimaux. 

They  had  lost  their  way  and  were  going  away  from 
the  ship  and  would  soon  have  perished.  The  addition 
of  four  men  to  my  nearly  starving  party  was  an  added 
burden,  but  we  fortunately  secured  some  ten  more 
hares,  and  started  for  the  ship. 

During  the  march  I  had  a  scout  out  all  the  time  look 
ing  for  game— hares  and  musk-oxen;  and  one  day,  just 
after  we  had  killed  a  dog,  a  herd  of  musk-oxen  was  seen 
some  five  miles  distant.  I  footed  it  for  the  five  miles, 
and  was  lucky  enough  to  kill  the  entire  herd  of  seven. 
Then  we  camped  there,  and  for  two  days  and  two 
nights  we  did  nothing  but  eat  and  sleep.  I  did  my 
share  of  it  too.  I  simply  had  n't  the  heart  to  make  the 
others  stop. 

I  need  not  speak  of  the  voyage  home,  but  may  add  a 
few  remarks  as  to  arctic  work,  on  points  not  generally 
understood.  The  incentive  of  the  earliest  northern 
voyages  was  commercial,  the  desire  of  the  northern 
European  nations  to  find  a  navigable  northern  route  to 
the  fabled  wealth  of  the  East.  "When  the  imprac 
ticability  of  such  a  route  was  proven,  the  adventurous 
spirit  of  Anglo-Saxon  and  Teuton  found  in  the  mys 
tery,  the  danger,  the  excitement,  which  crystallized 
under  the  name  " north  pole,"  a  worthy  antagonist  for 
their  fearless  blood.  The  result  of  their  efforts  has 
been  to  add  millions  to  the  world's  wealth,  to  demon 
strate  some  of  the  most  important  scientific  proposi- 


ROBERT  E.  PEARY  333 

tions,  and  to  develop  some  of  the  most  splendid  examples 
of  manly  courage  and  heroism  that  adorn  the  human 
record. 

Let  me  call  your  attention  to  that  flag,  that  tattered 
and  torn  and  patched  flag  you  see  hanging  over  the 
mantel  there.  That  is  the  flag  from  which  I  have  taken 
pieces  for  deposit  in  the  cairns  I  built.  You  will  notice 
that  three  pieces  are  gone.  One  is  in  the  cairn  at  the 
"farthest  north,"  87.6  degrees;  a  second  piece  I  placed 
in  a  cairn  I  built  on  one  of  the  twin  peaks  of  Columbia, 
Cape  Columbia ;  and  the  third  in  the  cairn  on  the  north 
ern  point  of  Jesup  Land. 

To  the  practical  explorer,  particularly  those  who  will 
yet  wrest  their  final  secrets  from  the  arctic  and  antarc 
tic  regions,  the  experience  of  the  expedition,  its  free 
dom  from  sickness  and  death,  especially  the  scurvy 
which  has  been  the  bane  of  so  many  expeditions,  even 
up  to  some  of  the  later  antarctic  ones ;  its  methods  and 
equipment,  its  rapidity  of  travel  and  its  evolution  of 
what  I  believe  will  be  the  true  type  of  ship  for  arctic 
and  antarctic  work,  able  to  fight,  or  drift,  or  sail  equally 
well,  as  circumstances  may  demand,  afford  valuable 
lessons. 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  work  has  defined  the  most 
northern  land  in  the  world,  and  has  fixed  the  northern 
limit  of  the  world's  largest  island,  was  that  work  a 
useless  expenditure  of  time,  effort,  and  money  ?  Neither 
the  club  nor  I  think  so.  The  money  was  theirs,  the  time 
and  effort  mine. 

But  the  scientific  results  are  the  immediate  practical 
ones,  and  British  and  foreign  commentators  do  not  ob 
scure  or  overlook  them ;  and  these  results,  together  with 


334  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  expedition's  non-loss  of  a  man,  entire  freedom  from 
scurvy  or  sickness  in  any  form,  and  return  of  the  ship, 
have  had  their  very  friendly  comments.  No  better 
illustration  of  the  practical  way  in  which  the  business 
men  of  the  Peary  Arctic  Club  have  approached  the 
work,  and  of  our  own  practicality  as  a  nation,  could  be 
afforded  than  the  quiet  way  in  which  the  club 's  expedi 
tions  have  set  forth,  and  particularly  the  recent  return 
of  the  Roosevelt,  as  compared  with  the  return  of  Nan- 
sen's  Fram.  The  latter  came  into  her  home  port  with 
salvoes  of  artillery,  a  harbor  covered  with  boats,  and  the 
shores  lined  with  a  cheering  multitude,  congratulations 
from  king  and  parliament,  and  Nansen  is  to-day  Nor 
wegian  ambassador  to  Great  Britain.  The  Roosevelt 
steamed  into  New  York  harbor,  lay  at  anchor  for  forty- 
eight  hours,  and  went  to  her  shipyard  for  repairs, 
without  a  ripple. 

The  discovery  not  only  of  the  north,  but  of  the  south 
pole  as  well,  is  not  only  our  privilege,  but  our  duty  and 
destiny,  as  much  as  the  building  of  the  Panama  Canal, 
and  the  control  of  the  Pacific.  The  canal  and  the  con 
trol  of  the  Pacific  mean  wealth,  commercial  supremacy, 
and  unassailable  power ;  but  the  discovery  of  the  poles 
spells  just  as  strongly  as  the  others,  national  prestige, 
with  the  moral  strength  that  comes  from  the  feeling 
that  not  even  century-defying  problems  can  with 
stand  us. 


AETHUE  T.  HADLEY 

(PRESIDENT  OF  YALE  UNIVERSITY) 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  EOBEET  E.  PEAEY 
FEBEUAEY  2,  1907 

I  HAVE  but  few  words  to  utter  on  this  happy  occa 
sion.  It  may  be  well  to  refer  briefly  to  the  charac 
teristics  of  these  explorers.  A  well-known  Persian 
savant,  about  three  or  four  hundred  years  ago,  stated 
that  there  were  two  great  problems  remaining  to  be 
solved.  The  first,  Why  does  the  tail  of  a  pig  always 
turn  to  the  right ;  and  the  second,  If  it  does  n't  turn  to 
the  right,  why  does  n't  it? 

Gentlemen,  I  beg  to  take  exception  to  the  saying  of 
the  Persian  philosopher.  There  still  remains  to-day  an 
enormous  problem  to  be  solved.  It  is  this.  There  still 
exists  an  area  in  the  polar  regions  which  covers  two 
million  square  miles,  and  of  which  nothing  is  known, 
except  through  inference.  The  world  at  large  to 
day,  both  this  country  and  Europe,  looks  to  the  Peary 
Arctic  Club  and  to  Commander  Peary  to  reflect  the 
light  over  this  unexplored  region.  There  are  two  or 
three  points  left  untouched,  although  Commander 
Peary  has  devoted  the  better  part  of  sixteen  years  to 
ward  the  exploration,  under  the  inspiration  of  the 
Arctic  Club.  In  his  work  he  has  spent  practically 
twelve  years  in  the  battle  and  the  study  of  the  explor- 

335 


336  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ers'  methods,  and  a  number  of  years  preparing  for  a 
new  battle,  and  the  whole  thing  lies  in  the  preparation. 

I  think  it  may  be  fairly  conceded  that  the  journey  of 
1892  was  in  fact  a  mere  preparation  for  this  last  expedi 
tion,  when  the  point  of  87.6  was  reached,  a  point  that 
had  never  been  approached  before. 

You  may  go  back  to  three  hundred  years  ago,  when 
Hendrik  Hudson  made  an  effort  to  discover  the  North 
west  Passage,  in  the  course  of  which  effort  he  got  down 
here  and  sailed  up  the  Hudson  River,  and  his  effort 
approached  perhaps  very  nearly  to  the  characteristics 
of  the  singular  efforts  of  Mr.  Peary.  And  you  can  go 
still  a  hundred  years  further  back,  and  you  will  find 
and  concede  that  no  explorer  has  made  a  braver  or 
better  battle  since  the  days  of  Magellan. 

In  order  to  show  what  I  mean  at  a  glance,  perhaps 
you  will  look  over  the  records  of  the  efforts  to  find  the 
pole  and  see  what  progress  has  been  made  in  northern 
exploration.  A  comparison  between  the  amount  of 
progress  made  by  British  explorers  and  that  of  Peary 
shows  that  in  the  remarkable  journey  of  Markham  he 
only  succeeded  in  making  the  journey  at  the  rate  of  one 
and  one  half  to  three  miles  per  day,  whereas  Peary 
traveled  from  twenty  to  thirty  miles.  These  facts  are 
most  significant  of  the  advance  made  by  Peary. 

It  is  not  necessary  for  me  to  impress  upon  you  the 
value  to  scientific  research  or  to  plane  geography  of  the 
work  which  Commander  Peary  has  done,  or  the  value  to 
the  prestige  of  the  country,  for  it  is  sufficiently  shown 
when  we  have  developed  such  a  man  as  Commander 
Peary. 


EOBLEY  D.  EVANS 

(REAR-ADMIRAL,  UNITED  STATES  NAVY) 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOE,  NOVEMBER  2,  1907 

OF  course  you  all  know  that  making  speeches  is  not 
my  business,  and  if  I  had  ever  had  the  idea  that  I 
could  make  one,  it  would  only  be  necessary  for  me  to 
look  around  this  table  and  decide  that  I  was  mistaken. 
I  can't  do  it,  but  I  thank  you,  gentlemen,  for  this 
glorious  night.  Not  in  a  personal  way,  because  I  know 
full  well  why  I  am  here,  not  because  I  am  Bob  Evans, 
but  rather  because  I  am  a  Rear-admiral  in  the  United 
States  Navy. 

In  the  Navy  we  are  not  much  different  from  the  rest 
of  you,  except  that  probably  just  now  we  are  not 
worried  quite  as  much  as  you  are.  In  the  Navy  we  have 
something  back  of  us  that  you  fortunately  have  back  of 
you— Uncle  Sam;  and  we  don't  worry  a  great  deal  in 
any  case  when  we  know  that  Uncle  Sam  is  back  of  us. 
Permit  me  to  say  just  here— I  think  that  not  all  of  you 
know  what  it  is  to  feel  sometimes,  when  things  are  get 
ting  strenuous,  that  there  are  seventy-five  millions  of 
Americans  back  here  who  are  looking  to  see  you  do 
something.  I  have  had  that  sensation  once  or  twice, 
and  have  tried  hard  to  do  something  that  would  please 
them.  We  are  exactly  like  you  in  one  thing,  we  like  to 

337 


338  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

please  our  employer.  You  employ  us,  and  we  like  to 
do  things— to  do  a  nice,  clean  job  when  we  get  at  it. 

During  the  past  forty-seven  years,  while  I  have  been 
interested  in  the  ships  in  the  Navy,  it  has  done  one  or 
two  pretty  clean  pieces  of  work;  and  I  would  like  to 
say  that  we  have  got  plenty  more  clean  work,  if  any 
body  else  wants  any,  which  we  can  deliver. 

It  is  difficult  to  make  a  speech,  when  the  regulations 
forbid  you  to  talk  about  the  only  thing  you  know  any 
thing  about.  Of  course  you  gentlemen  are  not  under 
the  necessity  of  being  under  the  will  of  anybody;  you 
have  no  one  to  consider  but  yourselves.  With  us  it  is 
different ;  but  as  the  government  has  published  a  good 
deal  about  this  fleet,  I  suppose  it  would  not  be  out  of 
place  for  me  to  comment  on  some  of  the  things  I  have 
seen  in  the  newspapers. 

This  fleet  of  sixteen  battle-ships,  and  half-a-dozen  de 
stroyers,  and  six  or  eight  auxiliaries,  will  sail  from 
Hampton  Roads  on  the  16th  of  December.  I  don't 
think  anybody  wants  to  stop  us,  and  I  think  they  would 
have  a  good  time  if  they  did.  I  know  the  officers  and 
men  I  command,  and  I  know  what  the  ships  can  do.  I 
don't  go  out  of  my  way  in  saying  you  won't  be  disap 
pointed,  whether  it  is  peace,  frolic,  or  fight.  So  far  as 
I  am  personally  concerned,  it  would  be  a  great  pleasure 
to  me  to  take  this  fleet  into  Yokohama.  I  know  the 
Japanese  people;  I  have  lived  with  them;  and  I  know 
the  hearty  welcome  we  should  receive  there. 

Now,  a  few  words  about  your  fleet.  When  we  took 
account  of  this  fleet  two  and  a  half  years  ago  we  were 
doing  target  practice  that  we  thought  was  fairly  good ; 


ROBLEY  D.  EVANS  339 

and  as  compared  with  that  of  other  nations,  it  was.  In 
the  last  target  practice  we  have  excelled  any  nation  on 
earth.  We  have  pulled  out  ahead  of  anybody,  and  I 
don't  ask  you  now  to  believe  some  of  the  things  I  am 
going  to  tell  you,  unless  you  want  to,  but  I  will  premise 
by  saying  that  I  am  going  to  tell  the  truth. 

We  have  just  completed  in  Massachusetts  Bay  a  target 
practice,  the  first  of  the  kind  ever  undertaken.  We 
moored  two  targets,  thirty  by  thirty  feet,  out  in  the 
open  sea,  and  then  steamed,  one  after  another,  past 
those  targets  at  a  distance  of  five  miles,  more  than  eight 
thousand  yards.  We  got  the  range,  and  then  opened 
fire,  exactly  as  in  battle  against  ships ;  and  some  of  the 
results  of  that  firing  were  startling.  The  Maine,  for 
instance,  got  on  the  target  with  the  third  shot  at  a 
range  of  about  eight  thousand  six  hundred  yards.  Then 
they  got  the  order  for  rapid  firing,  and  in  two  minutes 
and  fifteen  seconds  the  target  screen  was  cut  clean  off 
from  the  target,  so  that  the  hits  made  in  two  minutes 
and  fifteen  seconds — as  shown  when  we  picked  up  that 
screen — were  4  12-inch,  9  8-inch  and  17  7-inch  shells 
right  through  the  target,  which  simply  means  that  if 
another  battle-ship  were  off  there,  it  would  have  been 
out  in  two  minutes  and  twenty  seconds.  You  can  guess 
from  this  what  would  happen  if  that  was  kept  up  for 
ten  minutes. 

We  thought  that  in  practice  it  would  be  a  good 
scheme  to  train  up  some  of  our  own  officers  by  simulat 
ing  an  attack  by  three  torpedo  boats  on  our  battle 
ships;  and  they  got  in  as  far  as  three  thousand  yards, 
and  they  all  fired  at  the  three  targets  at  the  same  time. 


340  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

There  was  n't  a  single  ship  in  the  fleet  that  did  n't  hit 
all  three  in  the  first  minute,  sinking  all  the  torpedo- 
boats. 

Gentlemen,  when  we  go  through  the  Straits  of  Magel 
lan,  which  is  really  the  only  difficult  part  about  this 
great  cruise  to  the  Pacific  coast,  I  shall,  for  one,  think 
of  to-night,  and  I  hope  you  gentlemen  will  drink  a 
bumper  and  say, ' '  Good  luck  to  you  all ! " 


HENRY  C.  POTTEE 

(PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  BISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  BEAK-ADMIRAL  EVANS, 
NOVEMBER  2,  1907 

IT  is  not  gracious  in  your  president  to  remind  me  of 
the  long  absence  which  has  discredited  me  with  the 
Lotos  Club ;  but  I  beg  to  assure  him  that  within  the  last 
three  days  I  have  been  reading  a  large  part  of  the  his 
tory  of  the  Lotos  Club  in  the  recollections,  which  I 
commend  to  all  of  you,  of  the  late  Colonel  Richard 
Lathers,  who  lived  in  this  club  for  a  great  deal  of  his 
life  in  New  York,  and  who  was  one  of  the  most  enthusi 
astic  entertainers  of  all  the  distinguished  guests  gath 
ered  at  your  table.  It  is  in  precisely  that  spirit,  my 
dear  Mr.  President,  that  I  have  come  here  to-night. 

What  our  honored  guest  is  about  to  do  is  something 
which  will  enlist  the  sympathy,  I  venture  to  believe,  of 
every  American  citizen.  The  people  who  believe  in  war 
are  hoping  that  he  will  teach  to  other  nations  something 
of  the  qualities  of  American  ships.  The  people  who 
believe  in  peace,  of  whom  I  am  one,  will  rejoice  to  know 
that,  wherever  he  goes,  the  American  flag  will  be  put 
abreast  of  the  people  as  the  symbol  of  safety,  the  em 
blem  of  that  large-hearted  sympathy  which  to-day,  more 
than  in  any  other  land  in  the  world,  we  are  giving  to 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 

341 


342  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Now,  then,  gentlemen,  what  is  it  that  we  can  say  to 
Admiral  Evans,  as  he  sails  away  from  these  shores? 
What  is  the  message  of  greeting  and  assurance  that  we 
can  convey  to  him,  that  will  give  him  comfort  and 
strength  in  the  really  great  task  which  is  before 
him?  My  acquaintance  with  the  sailor's  life  is  not 
intimate.  Indeed,  I  am  credited  sometimes  with  an 
experience  in  that  connection  which  is  purely  figura 
tive.  For  instance,  as  my  friends  who  know  me  in 
timately  remember,  I  am  supposed  to  have  been  the 
man  who  addressed  a  lady  on  the  Channel  boat,  when 
the  sea  was  very  rough,  and  said,  ' '  Madam,  what  can  I 
do  for  you?"  And  when  the  lady  said  I  could  do 
nothing  for  her,  I  pointed  to  a  man  whose  head  was 
lying  in  her  lap,  and  said,  ''What  can  I  do  for  your 
husband?"  and  she  replied,  "He  is  not  my  husband;  I 
don't  know  who  he  is." 

Now,  my  dear  Admiral,  if  that  ever  happened  on  one 
of  your  ships,  I  want  to  assure  you  it  never  happened 
to  me.  If  there  is  anything  I  can  do  for  you,  sir,  I  am 
glad  to  be  here  to  oblige  you.  There  was  in  the  House 
of  Bishops  some  ten  or  fifteen  years  ago  a  bishop  whom 
a  great  many  men  in  this  room  knew  very  well ;  under 
his  preaching  they  sat  when  he  was  a  rector  in  New 
York,  and  he  possessed  a  great  many  very  unusual  gifts, 
and  a  very  uncertain  temper.  On  one  occasion,  in  the 
House  of  Bishops,  he  lost  his  temper,  and  used  language 
which,  when  night  came,  he  greatly  regretted.  He  came 
to  the  House  of  Bishops  the  next  morning,  and  with 
singularly  courtly  presence  and  manners  said  to  the 
chairman:  "Right  Reverend  Sir,  last  evening,  under 
the  stress  of  great  irritation,  I  forgot  myself;  I  used 


HENRY  C.  POTTER  343 

language  in  this  presence  which  was  unfitted  to  the 
occasion.  I  regret  it  extremely,  and  beg  to  apologize 
for  it,  and  ask  my  brethren  to  forgive  me.  But,  sir, ' '  he 
thundered  suddenly,  and  with  a  complete  change  of 
manner,  "I  maintain  that  this  Right  Reverend  House 
ought  to  set  apart  a  form  of  strong  words  to  be  used  by  a 
Christian  man  under  circumstances  of  great  provoca 
tion.  ' ' 

Now,  my  dear  Admiral,  if  it  will  be  any  relief  to  your 
mind,  I  will  prepare  a  set  form  of  strong  words  and 
license  you  to  use  them. 


SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  JANUARY  11,  1908 

I  WISH  to  begin  this  time  at  the  beginning,  lest  I 
forget  it  again.  And  that  is  to  say,  I  wish  to  thank 
you  now  for  this  welcome  that  you  are  giving  me,  and 
to  thank  you  also  for  the  welcome  which  you  gave  me 
seven  years  ago,  and  which  I  forgot  to  thank  you  for  at 
that  time.  And  I  also  wish  to  thank  you  for  the  wel 
come  which  you  gave  me  fourteen  years  ago,  and  which 
I  forgot  to  thank  you  for  at  that  time. 

You  know  how  it  is  when  you  are  in  a  parlor  with 
ladies  and  you  have  been  at  dinner  in  somebody's  house, 
and  when  you  are  going  away,  why,  common  decency 
or  your  own  conscience  should  suggest  to  you  that  it 
was  a  customary  thing  to  say  to  the  lady  of  the  house 
that  you  have  had  an  excellent  and  handsome  time. 
Everybody  can  remember  to  say  that  except  myself, 
and  therefore  I  always  detest  myself  when  I  come  away 
having  forgotten  the  common  courtesy  due  to  the  lady. 
And  I  am  now  paying  back  these  honors  by  thanking 
you  this  time.  I  say  that  now  because  if  I  tried  to  say 
that  when  I  get  through  I  should  not  think  of  it  again 
until  next  week,  and  therefore  I  had  better  say  it  now. 

I  hope  that  you  will  continue  this  excellent  custom  of 
giving  me  a  dinner  every  seven  years.  I  have  enjoyed 
it  so  much  on  these  three  occasions  that  although  I  have 

344 


SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS  345 

had  the  purpose  in  my  mind  some  time  of  joining  the 
hosts  in  the  other  world,  I  don't  know  which  one  of  the 
other  worlds,  I  am  willing  to  postpone  it  for  another 
seven  years. 

When  you  are  the  guest  of  honor  at  a  banquet  you 
are  always  in  a  sort  of  embarrassed  position,  because 
the  topics  you  are  to  talk  to  are  compliments.  Mr. 
Lawrence  has  paid  me  many  compliments.  Mr.  Porter 
has  paid  me  many  compliments,  and  that  is  what  al 
ways  happens.  It  is  very  difficult  to  talk  to  compli 
ments.  I  don't  care  whether  you  deserve  the  compli 
ments  or  not,  it  is  just  as  difficult  to  talk  to  them. 

The  other  night,  at  the  Engineers'  dinner,  I  sat  there 
and  enjoyed  the  squirms  of  Mr.  Carnegie  here,  because 
they  were  complimenting  him.  He  was  trying  to  think 
of  something  to  say  when  they  got  through ;  and  when 
they  got  through,  of  course  he  could  n't.  But  there  it 
was,  all  compliments,  all  compliments,  and  all  of  them 
deserved.  And  I  tried  to  help  him  out  by  a  few  wit 
ticisms  and  references  to  times  which  he  and  I  know 
about  and  nobody  else  does. 

I  can  manage  to  digest  them;  those  things  give  me 
no  trouble  at  all.  I  have  often  thought  that  I  missed 
so  much  in  this  life  that  I  did  n't  make  a  collection  of 
compliments  and  put  them  away  where  I  could  take 
them  out  now  and  then  and  look  them  over  and  enjoy 
them.  And  last  autumn,  when  I  came  back  from  Eng 
land—I  had  been  through  a  good  deal  of  complimenting 
there— I  began  to  think  that  I  missed  it  again. 

Now  I  am  beginning  to  select  compliments,  and  store 
them  away,  as  other  people  collect  pipes,  and  auto- 


346  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

graphs,  and  books,  and  such  things;  I  am  collecting 
compliments.  I  have  brought  some  of  these  compli 
ments  along,  and  you  can  see  what  they  are.  I  wrote 
them  down  to  preserve  them,  and  I  think  they  are  very 
good,  extraordinarily  just. 

Here  is  Hamilton  Mabie;  he  wrote  an  article  in  the 
Outlook  a  short  time  ago,  and  he  put  this  in.  I  think 
it  is  one  of  the  handsomest.  He  says:  "La  Salle  was 
the  first  man  to  make  the  voyage  of  the  great  stream 
of  the  Mississippi,  to  which  hordes  of  smaller  streams 
are  tributary;  but  Mark  Twain  was  the  first  man  to 
chart,  light,  and  indicate  it  for  the  whole  world."  If 
that  could  have  been  published  at  the  time  of  the  issue 
of  my  book  on  the  Mississippi,  it  would  have  been 
money  in  my  pocket. 

You  can  see  how  difficult  it  is  to  frame  a  compliment 
gracefully  and  make  it  ring  true.  It  is  a  talent  itself. 
I  never  possessed  it.  I  wish  I  did.  But  a  man  who 
can  pay  a  compliment  of  the  nature  of  that  compli 
ment  in  public  need  not  make  one  ashamed  of  one's 
self. 

Here  is  the  compliment  of  Alfred  Bigelow  Paine, 
my  biographer.  He  has  written  four  octavo  volumes 
about  me.  He  has  been  right  at  my  elbow  for  two 
years  and  a  half,  making  notes,  and  under  these  cir 
cumstances  if  he  does  n't  know  me,  who  does  know 
me  ?  This  is  his  testimony.  He  says :  ' '  Mark  Twain  is 
not  merely  a  great  writer,  but  a  great  philosopher  and 
a  great  man.  He  is  the  supreme  expression  of  the 
human  being,  with  his  strength  and  his  weakness. ' ' 

It  takes  a  talent  for  compliment  in  order  to  make 
one  like  that.  And  now  then,  I  come  to  Mr.  Howells's 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  347 

compliment.  Howells,  writing  in  the  December  At 
lantic,  last  month,  going  over  his  reminiscences  of 
ancient  days  when  he  was  editor  of  the  Atlantic 
Monthly  about  thirty-five  years  ago,  or  a  little  before 
that;  and  in  this  December  Atlantic,  when  he  had 
reached  seventy  years  of  his  life,  he  was  passing  in  pro 
cession  before  him  Emerson,  and  Lowell,  and  Holmes, 
and  Whittier,  and  other  men  that  were  in  those  days 
writing  for  the  Atlantic,  that  is,  thirty-five  years  ago ; 
and  then  he  came  round  to  the  younger  men,  the  men 
that  were  just  coming  along,  and  he  reached  out  to  me, 
and  he  said  of  me,  then  and  now:  "Later,  1871,  came 
Mark  Twain,  originally  of  Missouri,  but  then  of  Hart 
ford,  and  now  ultimately  of  the  solar  system,  not  to 
say  the  universe. ' ' 

It  seems  to  me  that  that  is  a  satisfying  kind  of  com 
pliment.  I  know  that  if  he  can  prove  that  my  fame 
has  reached  to  Neptune  and  Uranus,  and  possibly  to 
some  systems  a  little  beyond  there,  why,  that  would 
satisfy  me.  Howells  knows  how  to  say  those  things; 
that  courteous  man,  you  know  Howells,  how  sweet  and 
gentle  he  is,  how  painfully  modest  and  retiring  he  is; 
but  you  know,  deep  down,  that  man  is  as  full  of  vanity 
as  I  am,  and  just  as  ready  to  show  off  as  I  am.  You 
know  Howells,  they  called  him  over  there,  and  made 
him  an  Oxford  LL.D. ;  and  he  came  back  with  his  red 
gown,  and  you  'd  always  think  that  Howells  would  n't 
dare  put  that  fiery  gown  on  his  back,  with  all  his  osten 
sible  modesty.  Now  that  is  a  mistake.  He  told  me 
himself  ten  days  ago  that  when  he  was  going  to  a  public 
function  up  here  of  some  kind  at  Columbia  University, 
he  sent  and  aske*d  what  kind  of  a  gown  he  had  got  to 


348  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

wear,  the  American  black  gown  or  the  Oxford  red 
gown,  and  they  sent  him  word  that  it  was  not  cus 
tomary  to  appear  in  anything  but  the  ordinary  black 
university  gown  of  America.  And  Howells  said  he 
went  there,  and  in  the  great  crowd  of  black  gowns  there 
were  three  of  those  red  Oxford  badges.  Howells  was 
so  ashamed  of  himself  and  vexed  with  himself,  because 
he  could  have  been  one  of  those  angels  of  light  in  that 
red,  instead  of  being  unnoticed  with  the  general  crowd 
of  black  men. 

And  this  is  Mr.  Edison's  compliment.  Edison  was 
at  that  Engineers'  dinner  the  other  night,  where  you, 
Mr.  Carnegie,  believed  a  lot  of  pleasant  things  that 
were  not  so.  And  this  I  took  from  a  newspaper  that 
said  that  when  I  had  finished  speaking  and  went  home, 
Mr.  Edison  wrote  on  his  dinner  card  and  passed  it  to 
his  neighbor.  What  he  wrote  was:  "An  American 
loves  his  family.  If  he  has  any  love  left  over  for  some 
other  person,  he  generally  selects  Mark  Twain."  I 
think  the  world  of  that  great  compliment;  that  suits 
me  best,  it  is  what  I  like  to  see. 

And  finally,  here  is  the  compliment  of  a  little  Mon 
tana  girl,  at  some  little  town  in  Montana.  She  did  n't 
send  it  to  me ;  some  person  in  that  town  or  some  visitor 
sent  it  to  Chicago,  and  it  was  sent  out  to  me.  This  little 
girl  was  in  a  neighbor's  house,  and  she  was  noticed 
gazing  musingly  at  a  large  photograph  of  me  on  the 
mantelpiece,  and  presently  she  said  reverently,  "We 
have  got  a  John  the  Baptist  like  that  at  home,  only  ours 
has  more  trimmings."  I  suppose  she  meant  the  halo, 
and  mine  has  n't  arrived  yet. 

Now,  here  is  a  gold-miner's  compliment,  and  this  one 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  349 

is  forty-two  years  old.  I  remember  the  circumstances 
perfectly  well.  It  was  the  introduction  of  Mark  Twain, 
lecturer,  to  an  audience  of  gold-miners  at  Red  Dog, 
California,  in  1866,  by  one  of  themselves.  It  was  in  a 
log  house,  a  large  school-house,  and  the  audience  oc 
cupied  benches  without  any  back,  and  there  were  no 
ladies  present,  they  did  n't  know  me  then;  but  all  just 
miners  with  their  breeches  tucked  into  their  boot-tops. 
And  they  wanted  somebody  to  introduce  me  to  them, 
and  they  pitched  upon  this  miner,  and  he  objected.  He 
said  he  had  never  appeared  in  public,  and  had  never 
done  any  work  of  this  kind;  but  they  said  it  did  n't 
matter,  and  so  he  came  on  the  stage  with  me  and  in 
troduced  me  in  this  way.  He  said : 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  this  man,  anyway.  I 
only  know  two  things  about  him.  One  is,  he  has  never 
been  in  jail;  and  the  other  is,  I  don't  know  why." 

Well,  gentlemen,  I  shall  value  that  collection  when  I 
get  it  finished.  I  don't  care  where  a  compliment  falls, 
nor  from  whose  lips  it  comes,  it  is  always  a  blessed, 
blessed  thing  to  receive.  Mr.  Lawrence  has  spoken  of 
certain  compliments  and  attentions  to  me  in  England, 
and  I  remember  them  so  pleasantly.  They  were  com 
pliments  from  great  personages,  and  notice  taken  of 
me  by  great  personages;  and  it  pleases  me  to  think 
that  that  notice  was  taken  of  me  all  the  way  down,  all 
the  way  down  to  where  what  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
and  I,  sitting  in  Union  Square  and  "Washington  Square 
a  great  many  years  ago,  tried  to  find  a  name  for,  the 
submerged  fame,  that  fame  that  permeates  the  great 
crowd  of  people  you  never  see  and  never  mingle  with ; 
people  with  whom  you  have  no  speech,  but  who  read 


350  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

your  books  and  become  admirers  of  your  work  and 
have  an  affection  for  you.  You  may  never  find  it  out  in 
the  world,  but  there  it  is,  and  it  is  the  faithfulness  of 
the  friendship,  of  the  homage  of  those  men,  never  criti 
cizing,  that  began  when  they  were  children.  They  have 
nothing  but  compliments,  they  never  see  the  criticisms, 
they  never  hear  any  disparagement  of  you,  and  you 
will  remain  in  the  home  of  their  hearts'  affection  for 
ever  and  ever.  And  Louis  Stevenson  and  I  decided 
that  of  all  fame,  that  was  the  best,  the  very  best. 

I  knew  His  Majesty  the  King  of  England  long  ago, 
years  and  years  ago.  I  did  n't  meet  him  for  the  first 
time  this  time  at  all,  but  the  first  time  since  he  has  been 
king,  and  now  there  was  one  thing  there  that  I  re 
gretted.  I  regret  that  very  much.  It  distressed  me. 
That  was  that  some  newspaper  said  that  I  talked  to  the 
Queen  of  England  with  my  hat  on.  Very  well,  that 
could  have  been  explained.  I  did  n't  approach  the 
Queen  of  England  with  my  hat  on,  but  with  it  in  my 
hand,  where  it  belonged.  I  would  not  wear  a  hat;  I 
trust  I  have  better  sense  than  that,  and  better  manners 
than  that;  I  know  we  have  here.  I  did  n't  put  my  hat 
on  when  first  she  asked  me  to  put  it  on ;  and  I  neglected 
that,  and  then  Her  Majesty  told  me  to  put  it  on.  There 
is  a  command;  and,  in  fact,  the  first  invitation  was  a 
command.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  had  made  my  reputa 
tion  for  democracy,  that  I  had  gone  far  enough  when  I 
disobeyed  twice,  and  I  drew  the  line  there.  It  was  to 
please  her.  I  had  n't  any  use  for  a  hat,  and  never  did 
have. 

There  were  some  other  things  there  that  have  never 
been  in  print,  but  they  did  rejoice  my  soul.  The  very 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  351 

first  thing  they  gave  me,  when  I  stepped  ashore  from 
that  ship  on  English  soil,  a  great  body  of  the  bone  and 
sinew  of  England,  the  stevedores,  gathered  together 
and  received  me  with  a  hearty  English  cheer.  And  I 
liked  that  so  much.  And  in  Mr.  Porter's  house,  I  was 
his  guest  in  Oxford,  the  butler  from  some  neighbor 
of  his  came  over  and  proposed  to,  and  did,  superintend 
all  the  arrangements  for  a  large  luncheon  party  so  that 
he  could  look  at  me.  He  said  he  had  read  every  book 
of  mine,  and  he  just  wanted  to  see  me.  And  that  was 
an  immense  compliment.  He  could  quote  from  those 
books;  he  remembered  what  was  in  them.  I  don't. 
That  was  a  compliment  most  valuable  of  all. 

And  then,  who  was  that  talked  about  the  police? 
Why,  it  was  proper  that  the  police  should  know  me 
over  there.  Why,  the  police  know  me  everywhere.  And 
I  tell  you  that  the  knowledge  of  the  London  police,  their 
knowledge  of  me,  was  a  very  high  compliment  indeed. 
It  has  always  pleased  me.  There  never  was  a  time  when 
I  went  up  to  London  that  one  of  those  men,  those  splen 
did  policemen,  did  n't  salute  me,  and  that  salute  was  a 
compliment ;  and  he  then  would  put  up  that  all-power 
ful  hand  of  his  and  arrest  the  commerce  of  the  world, 
to  let  me  cross  that  street  uncrippled.  And  he  would 
treat  me  just  as  he  would  a  duchess.  I  appreciated 
that  ever  so  much. 

And,  finally,  there  was  that  distinction  that  I  had  to 
take  back  from  England,  one  that  I  take  particular  and 
peculiar  pride  in,  and  that  is,  that  old  Punch— Punch, 
which  never  in  all  its  long  history  allowed  any  foreigner 
the  privilege  of  entering  that  great  dining-room  in  the 
Punch  Building  where  those  men  sit  once  a  week,  and 


352  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

have  for  fifty  years— Leech,  and  Burnand,  and  Russell, 
and  Du  Maurier,  and  all  the  men  that  have  made  Punch 
great  in  England— and  Punch  is  great  in  England,  is 
the  greatest  periodical  in  the  world  on  its  own  soil.  I 
say  on  its  own  soil  for  the  reason  that  you  know  you 
can't  understand  an  Englishman's  joke,  and  the  Eng 
lishman  can't  understand  our  jokes.  The  cause  is  very 
simple,  it  is  for  the  reason  that  we  are  not  familiar 
with  the  conditions  that  make  the  point  of  the  English 
joke.  But  Punch  is  a  great  periodical. 

As  I  say,  Punch  never  had  granted  that  grace  to  any 
foreigner  before,  to  sit  down  at  that  great  board ;  but  it 
extended  that  great  privilege  to  me.  I  went  there  and 
sat  with  the  editors  of  Punch  and  the  cartoonists ;  that 
is  where  they  meet  once  a  week  and  lay  out  the  next 
week's  Punch;  and  when  everything  was  ready  and 
everybody  seated  at  the  table,  the  editor  said,  "Just  a 
minute ;  there  is  to  be  a  little  ceremony, ' '  and  then  out 
of  a  little  bit  of  a  closet,  where  she  had  been  shut  up,  a 
little  bit  of  a  creature,  eight  years  old  probably,  a  little 
girl  all  pink  and  white  and  blue,  pretty  as  a  picture, 
danced  out  of  that  closet  and  made  a  curtsey  to  me. 
She  had  in  her  hand  the  original  of  the  Punch  cartoon 
of  the  previous  week,  in  which  Punch  is  drinking  my 
health.  And  that  pretty  little  creature,  that  little  fairy, 
probably  eight  years  old,  just  innocence  itself,  broke 
me  all  up.  The  child  expected  to  go  back  in  the  closet, 
but  they  gave  her  a  greeting,  and  she  came  and  sat  in 
her  father's  lap,  the  chief  editor,  until  half  the  dinner 
was  over.  And  the  prettiest  decoration  of  that  wonder 
ful  table  was  that  beautiful  child.  When  she  was  sent 
away  she  came  and  said,  ' '  Good-night, ' '  to  me.  I  said, 
"Oh,  my  dear,  you  are  not  going  to  leave  me.  Why, 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  353 

we  have  hardly  got  acquainted;  you  ought  to  stay.'7 
And  she  replied,  "No,  they  never  let  me  come  here  be 
fore  ;  and  now  they  will  never  let  me  come  again. ' '  And 
that  is  one  of  the  beautiful  instances  that  I  cherish  of 
those  days  there. 

And  lest  you  should  imagine  that  I  did  n't  heartily 
appreciate  the  English  hospitality,  and  lest  you  should 
think  that  I  did  n't  do  what  little  I  could  to  confess 
what  I  felt  about  them,  I  will  conclude  with  a  few  sen 
tences  with  which  I  closed  the  last  speech  that  I  made 
in  England,  the  night  before  I  sailed.  It  was  at  the 
banquet  given  to  me  by  the  Lord  Mayor  of  Liverpool, 
and  I  said : 

"I  am  now  to  say  good-bye.  Home  is  dear  to  all  of 
us,  and  I  am  now  departing  to  my  home  beyond  the 
ocean.  Oxford  has  conferred  upon  me  the  highest 
honor  that  has  ever  fallen  to  my  share  in  this  life's 
prizes,  and  which  was  the  very  one  I  would  have 
chosen ;  it  is  the  very  one  I  would  have  chosen  as  being 
more  gracious  than  any  other  honor  that  could  be  con 
ferred  upon  me  by  men  or  state.  And  during  my  four 
weeks'  stay  here  in  England  I  have  had  another  lofty 
honor,  a  continuous  honor,  an  honor  which  has  flowed 
willingly  along  without  hold  or  cessation  during  all 
these  twenty-six  days,  a  most  gratifying,  most  delight 
ful  honor  in  this,  this  treatment,  the  heartfelt  grip  of 
the  hand,  and  the  compliment  that  does  n't  descend 
from  the  blue-gray  matter  of  the  brain,  but  rushes  by 
red  blood  out  of  the  heart,  and,  so  voiced,  is  manifestly 
freighted  with  affection,  that  dearest  reward  that  any 
man  can  earn  by  character  or  achievements  in  this 
world.  And,  My  Lord,  it  makes  me  proud,  and  some 
times,  sometimes  it  makes  me  humble.  Many,  many 


354  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

years  ago  I  gathered  an  incident  from  Mr.  Dana's  'Two 
Years  before  the  Mast. '  It  was  like  this :  There  was  a 
poor  little  ignorant,  self -satisfied  skipper  of  a  coasting 
sloop  of  New  England  engaged  in  the  dried-apples  and 
kitchen  furniture  trade,  and  he  was  always  hailing 
every  vessel  that  passed,  and  he  only  did  it  just  to  hear 
himself  talk,  and  air  his  small  greatness,  just  as  I  am 
always  doing  myself,  always  showing  off,  always  trying 
to  attract  attention  and  notice.  And  that  poor  little 
man  could  n't  help  that.  He  was  born  that  way,  and 
so  was  I. 

"And  one  day  a  majestic  Indiaman  came  floating  by, 
with  course  on  course  of  canvas  towering  into  the  sky, 
and  with  its  decks  and  yards  swarming  with  sailors,  and 
full  burdened  to  the  Plimsoll  line  with  spices,  aromatic 
spices  and  gums,  lading  all  the  breezes  with  the  gracious 
and  mysterious  odors  of  the  Orient,  a  noble  spectacle,  a 
sublime  spectacle,  that  great  ship.  Of  course  that  little 
skipper  hopped  into  the  shrouds  and  squeaked  out  the 
hail,  '  Ship  ahoy !  What  ship  is  that,  and  whence,  and 
whither?'  And  then— a  deep  and  thunderous  voice 
came  back  booming  across  the  tops  of  the  waves,  'The 
Begum  of  Bengal;  one  hundred  and  forty-eight  days 
out  from  Canton;  homeward  bound.  What  ship  is 
that?' 

"And,  you  know,  that  just  crushed  that  poor  little 
creature  flat,  and  he  squawked  back  this:  'Only  the 
Mary  Ann;  fourteen  hours  out  from  Boston ;  bound  for 
Kittery  Point. '  Oh,  the  eloquence  of  that  word,  ' Only' ; 
the  eloquence  of  that  phrase,  'Only  the  Mary  Ann,'  to 
express  the  depths  of  his  humbleness. 

"And  that  is  just  my  case,  My  Lord;  just  my  case. 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  355 

During  one  short  hour  in  the  twenty-four  I  pause  and 
reflect ;  during  one  short  hour  in  the  silent  watches  of 
the  night,  with  the  music  of  your  English  welcomes  still 
ringing  in  my  ears,  and  I  am  humble;  then  I  rec 
ognize,  and  then  I  confess  to  myself  that  I  am  'Only 
the  Mary  Ann,'  fourteen  hours  out,  cargoed  with  vege 
tables,  and  bound— where?  But  during  all  the  other 
twenty-three  hours  my  satisfied  vanity  rides  high  on 
the  white  crests  of  your  approval,  and  then  I  am  the 
stately  Indiaman,  flying  across  the  seas  under  a  cloud 
of  canvas,  and  laden  to  the  Plimsoll  mark  with  the  most 
redolent  spices  that  were  ever  passed  to  a  wanderer 
alone  in  this  world;  and  then  my  twenty-six  days  on 
this  old  mother  soil  seem  ample  for  themselves,  and  I 
am  the  'Begum  of  Bengal;  one  hundred  and  forty-eight 
days  out  from  Canton;  and  homeward  bound/  " 

(At  this  point  the  Oxford  cap  and  doctor's  gown 
were  brought,  and  Dr.  Clemens  put  them  on,  amid  great 
applause. ) 

Oh,  this  is  all  right!  I  should  have  brought  them 
myself  if  I  had  thought  of  it.  I  like  the  giddy  costume. 
I  was  born  for  a  savage.  There  is  n't  any  color  that  is 
too  bright  and  too  strong  for  me,  and  the  red— is  n't 
that  red?  There  is  no  such  red  as  that  outside  the 
arteries  of  an  ox.  I  should  just  like  to  wear  it  all  the 
time,  and  to  go  up  and  down  Fifth  Avenue  and  hear  the 
people  envy  me  and  wish  they  dared  to  wear  a  costume 
like  that.  I  am  going  to  a  house,  to  a  luncheon  party, 
where  there  will  be  nobody  present  but  ladies;  I  shall 
be  the  only  lady  there  of  my  sex,  and  I  shall  put  this  on 
and  make  those  ladies  look  dim. 


ANDEEW  CAENEGIE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS, 
JANUARY  11,  1908 

SAINT  MARK  and  Fellow-Members:  I  was  begin 
ning  to  think  what  the  Governor  of  North  Caro 
lina  said  to  the  Governor  of  South  Carolina,  upon  a 
memorable  occasion,  when  I  reflected  that  it  is  nearly 
two  years  since  I  had  the  pleasure  of  appearing  among 
you,  and  addressing  you,  and  enjoying  your  dinners. 
He  remarked  that  "It  is  a  long  time  between  drinks. " 

But  I  rejoice  to-night,  when  I  come  among  you  after 
an  absence,  upon  this  occasion  of  all  others.  You,  Mr. 
President,  have  talked  about  replying  to  some  things 
that  Saint  Mark  has  said,  and  I  can  think  of  nothing 
except  one  thing  which  he  said  that  was  wrong ;  he  told 
you  that  his  halo  had  not  arrived.  That  was  a  mistake 
on  his  part,  for  one  of  the  treasures  that  I  have  kept 
and  shall  keep,  is  to  this  effect : 

"Dear  Saint  Andrew:  If  you  had  told  me  what  was 
coming  when  you  sat  at  my  bedside  the  day  before  you 
sailed,  I  would  have  given  you  my  halo  then.  Take  it 
now.  You  have  won  it  fairly.  It  is  a  good  halo,  pure  tin, 
and  paid  the  duty  when  it  came  down,  and  now  it  is 
better  than  when  it  came  down."  Now  that  is  signed 
1  { Saint  Mark. ' '  And  I  was  wondering  to-night  how  he 

356 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  357 

had  forgotten  that  he  once  had  a  halo,  and  I  am  sure 
that  none  of  us  feel  upon  this  occasion  that  he  has  lost  it. 

Gazing  upon  that  head,  every  hair  of  it  seems  to 
be  a  halo,  and  I  find  that  Mark  Twain  exudes  halos. 
And  he  could  present  his  friend  Mr.  Rogers,  or  myself, 
or  Colonel  Harvey,  or  you,  Mr.  President,  with  a  halo, 
now  and  then,  and  not  miss  them. 

Now,  gentlemen,  when  Mark  Twain  is  talked  about, 
and  especially  when  he  is  talked  about  in  Britain,  his 
high  and  unique  literary  quality  is  always  expatiated 
upon;  and  in  my  opinion  they  elevate  that  feature  of 
his  many-sided  character  and  fail  properly  to  value  the 
man  that  underlies  all  this  literary  excellence  for  which 
he  is  unique,  and  for  which,  no  doubt,  as  we  all  know, 
he  is  to  go  down  to  posterity  among  the  immortals ;  but 
let  me  call  your  attention  to-night  to  the  man  that 
underlies  the  artist. 

There  come  to  men  in  this  world  supreme  moments 
when  the  test  is  made.  Is  this  pure  gold,  or  is  it  not 
gold?  Now  that  test  came  to  Mr.  Clemens  at  a  time 
when  he  found  himself  embarrassed  pecuniarily.  "Well, 
many  men  have  been  embarrassed;  many  men  have 
obeyed  the  law,  and  given  up  all  they  had,  and  received 
release,  and  there  is  an  end  on't.  That  was  all  the 
creditors  could  have  asked.  That  is  all  that  the  law  re 
quires  of  an  honorable  man.  Well,  what  did  Mark 
Twain  do?  He  was  n't  asking,  "What  is  due  my 
creditors  ?"  but,  "What  is  due  to  myself  ?"  And  he 
took  the  burden  upon  his  shoulders.  He  entered  the 
fiery  furnace  of  trial  a  man,  and  he  emerged  a  hero. 

I  have  been  highly  entertained,  and  laughed  and 
laughed  over  what  he  has  written,  but  until  I  knew  the 


358  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

man,  I  could  not  appreciate  Mr.  Clemens.  What  a  man 
does  is  not  seldom  greater  than  anything  he  can  write. 
It  is  the  deed  that  makes  the  man,  and  here  was  the 
occasion,  and  here  stood  the  man.  Now  after  what  he 
has  written,  the  future  historian  is  to  read  the  story 
of  this  man's  life,  if  he  has  a  biographer  that  under 
stands  his  duties,  and  he  is  to  say  that  great  as  the 
original  was,  a  man  of  undoubted  genius— there  never 
has  lived  but  one  Mark  Twain  in  this  world— he  was 
still  greater  as  a  man— a  hero  who  in  trial  proved  him 
self  the  pure  gold.  He  has  a  style  of  his  own,  and  he  has 
no  followers,  genius  seldom  has,  and  he  has  followed  no 
man— I  have  always  had  a  streak  of  Bohemianism  in 
my  composition,  and  I  have  sought  the  best  society 
always  that  I  could  find.  I  knew  Charles  F.  Browne; 
Artemas  Ward;  Bret  Harte;  your  own  Josh  Billings, 
Mr.  Shaw;  and  I  have  known  every  man  of  that  class 
that  I  ever  had  an  opportunity  to  know;  and  I  know 
that  no  person  who  sits  here  values  them  more  than  I 
do.  But  Mark  Twain  is  different  from  all  these  as  man. 
He  is  in  a  class  by  himself;  and  I  don't  make  much  of 
a  claim  when  I  say  that  as  a  man,  tested  in  the  fiery 
furnace  of  trial,  whether  he  was  pure  gold  or  only  com 
mon  clay,  there  are  only  a  limited  number  of  men  who 
could  rank  with  him. 

And  I  see  his  friend  there,  Mr.  Eogers,  to  whom  he 
went  and  to  whose  advice  and  sterling  friendship 
he  owes  so  much,  a  lucky  man,  too,  in  that  wherever  he 
goes,  there  go  friends  with  him.  That  is  the  main 
thing  I  like  in  the  man.  These  are  the  things  that  tell. 
And  the  more  I  know  of  Mark  Twain— I  have  known 
him  pretty  well  lately ;  by  lately,  I  mean  the  last  twenty 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  359 

years _that  is  something  in  a  lifetime.  There  is,  of 
course,  the  universal  verdict  that  Mark  Twain  is 
unique  in  literature.  He  had  given  the  world  some 
thing  of  which  it  had  much  need.  But  few  know  the 
creator  of  all  those  works,  the  hero  from  whom  they 
have  proceeded ;  I  have  no  doubt  about  the  heights  your 
distinguished  guest  has  attained  in  that  field.  Before 
closing  I  wish  to  mention  one  point  I  had  forgotten. 
There  was  another  man  who  did  what  Mark  Twain  has 
done— Sir  Walter  Scott.  He  and  Walter  Scott  will 
live  together  in  history,  because  they  both  went  through 
the  same  fiery  furnace  and  proved  the  metal  of  which 
they  were  composed.  Of  Mark  Twain  I  am  willing  to 
say,  as  Burns  said  about  Tarn  Sampson : 

Tarn  Sampson's  well-worn  clay  lies  here, 
By  canting  bigots  blamed; 

But  with  such  as  he,  where'er  he  be— this  mark- 
May  I  be  saved  or  damned. 


EGBERT  STUAET  MAcABTHUE 

AT  THE  DINNEK  TO  SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS, 
JANUAEY  11,  1908 

I  GREATLY  felicitate  myself  on  my  good  fortune  in 
meeting  with  you  to-night,  when  you  meet  to  do 
honor  to  Dr.  Clemens,  and  thereby  do  additional  honor 
to  the  Lotos  Club.  I  have  also  a  deep  sense  of  the 
pleasure  which  I  shall  experience  when  this  club  meets 
in  its  beautiful  new  club-house  under  the  shadow  of 
my  spire  on  Fifty-seventh  Street.  I  feel  that  I  shall 
have  to  elect  myself  as  your  chaplain,  that  I  may  see 
that  everything  is  done  in  decency  and  order  and  ac 
cording  to  the  highest  rules  of  orthodoxy  in  this  club. 
It  has  been  said  about  Saint  Mark— oh,  don't  you  forget 
that  he  has  it  on  now.  "What  does  the  good  book  say? 
"A  hoary  head  is  a  crown  of  glory  when  found  in  the 
way  of  righteousness. " 

Yet  when  Mark  Twain  goes,  he  has  given  to  liter 
ature  living,  enduring  characters.  The  greatest  maker 
of  characters  is  Shakespeare.  In  that  respect  he  stands 
alone.  In  that  respect,  as  the  Germans  would  say,  he 
is  "Der  Einzige."  He  is  the  only  one.  I  think,  per 
haps,  that  next  to  Shakespeare  comes  Charles  Dickens. 
He  has  given  us,  next  to  Shakespeare,  the  greatest 
number  of  characters  that  will  endure  in  literature 
and  live.  The  third  place,  perhaps,  belongs  to  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  to  whom  Mr.  Carnegie  made  such  ap 
propriate  allusion  just  now.  Or,  perhaps,  it  belongs 

360 


ROBERT  STUART  MAcARTHUR       361 

to  George  Eliot ;  I  am  not  quite  sure.  But  I  am  quite 
sure  that  in  that  category  stands  Mark  Twain,  what 
ever  position  he  may  have  there.  He  has  given  us 
characters  that  have  reality  and  vitality,  and  that  will 
have  immortality,  without  the  slightest  doubt.  And 
because  of  his  identification  of  these  characters  with 
actual  life,  he  and  Dickens  and  others  whose  written 
books  are  in  the  lighter  vein  have  perhaps  very  little 
conception  of  the  influence  which  their  books  exercise. 

Only  recently  I  was  in  India.  I  stand  in  some  re 
spect  in  sympathetic  touch  with  certain  phases  of  life 
in  India.  Relatives  both  of  my  father  and  my  mother 
fought  in  the  British  Army  all  through  the  Crimean 
War  and  all  through  the  Sepoy  Rebellion,  and  I  re 
ceived  many  honors  from  civil  and  military  officers  in 
India.  I  found  in  the  officers'  quarters;  I  found  in 
the  barracks  of  the  common  soldiers;  I  found  in  the 
homes  of  the  Babus;  I  found  in  conversation  with 
Eurasians,  who  are  largely  the  conductors  on  railway 
trains  in  India,  a  perfect  familiarity  with  the  books  of 
Mark  Twain. 

One  of  the  most  distinguished  officers  in  India  told 
me  that  some  of  those  books  had  cheered  his  lonely 
hours,  had  brightened  his  life  in  India,  and  had  given 
him  nobler  aspirations  for  the  future,  and  grander  and 
supremer  morality. 

I  was  reminded,  as  these  officers  told  me,  of  an  inci 
dent  that  occurred  in  relation  to  General  Sherman. 
You  will  recall  the  fact  that  a  few  years  ago  Charles 
Dickens  the  younger  came  to  this  city  and  gave  read 
ings  from  his  father's  books.  Those  readings  were  to 
be  given  in  Chickering  Hall.  I  went  early;  I  had  a 


^62  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

seat  on  the  platform.  General  Sherman,  who  then  had 
his  home  in  New  York,  came  in  and  took  a  seat  beside 
me.  I  had  with  me  my  little  daughter,  and  I  was  very 
anxious  that  she  should  know  General  Sherman,  so  I 
took  the  liberty  of  presenting  her  to  the  great  general. 
He  said,  ' '  I  am  so  glad  to  have  an  opportunity  to  hear 
Charles  Dickens,  Junior.  I  owe— and  I  think  this 
remark  has  never  been  put  into  print;  some  day  I 
propose  to  write  it  out — I  owe  a  debt  of  gratitude  to 
his  father,  Charles  Dickens,  which  I  shall  never  be 
able  to  pay.  During  my  march  to  the  sea,  after  many 
of  my  greatest  battles,  I  went  into  my  tent,  I  took  up 
'David  Copperfield,'  'Martin  Chuzzlewit,'  'Tale  of 
Two  Cities/  and  others  of  Dickens 's  books,  and  I  for 
got  all  the  horrors  of  the  battles  of  the  day;  I  forgot 
all  the  terrible  anticipations  of  the  day  to  come.  Dick 
ens  lifted  me  out  of  myself;  lifted  me  out  of  my  en 
vironment,  lifted  me  into  another  world,  and  in  that 
world  there  was  peace  and  brightness  and  joy;  and  I 
thank  Charles  Dickens  from  the  bottom  of  my  soul  for 
the  influence  of  his  books  and  his  characters  on  my 
military  life. ' ' 

Little  did  Charles  Dickens  know  the  influence  that 
his  books  were  to  exercise  over  General  Sherman.  Lit 
tle  do  you  know,  sir,  of  the  influence  that  your  books 
will  exercise,  and  have  exercised,  from  the  throne  of 
the  king  to  the  home  of  the  peasant ;  from  the  miner  on 
the  hillsides  and  valleys  of  England,  and  in  every 
country  and  empire  around  the  globe.  Your  crown  of 
glory  is  already  on  your  lofty  brow,  my  dear  friend. 

And  then  again,  as  I  would  suggest,  I  honor  our 
guest  of  to-night  for  the  amelioration  of  trying  condi- 


EGBERT  STUART  MAcARTHUR       363 

tions  in  the  lives  of  many,  which  his  various  books  have 
secured.  A  physician  of  the  old  world  has  recently 
said  that  every  man  should  live  to  be  at  least  one  hun 
dred  and  ten  years  old,  and  that  one  of  the  great 
elements  in  securing  this  degree  of  longevity  is  cheer 
fulness,  joyousness,  brightness  of  life.  Do  you  know, 
sir,  I  would  like,  if  I  were  Mr.  Carnegie  or  some  of  the 
other  multi-millionaires  here,  I  would  like  to  endow  a 
chair  in  every  college  in  this  country,  and  every  theo 
logical  seminary,  where  they  train  men  to  be  preachers, 
I  should  like  to  endow  a  Chair  for  Sanctified  Fun,  and 
make  you  the  incumbent  of  it. 

Why,  sir,  there  is  a  class  of  men  who  think  that 
gloom  is  synonymous  with  grace,  and  that  dullness  is  a 
synonym  for  piety.  They  make  an  enormous  mistake. 
Merriment  is  vitality,  merriment  is  health  and  youth, 
and  joy  is  a  foretaste  of  heaven. 

I  give  you,  sir,  all  the  benefit  of  clergy  to-night. 
There  is  no  danger  about  your  being  on  the  left  hand 
with  the  goats.  Why,  bless  you,  you'd  make  all  the 
goats  sheep  before  you  had  been  with  them  half  an 
hour !  I  sincerely  hope  that  we  shall  celebrate  another 
dinner  with  you  seven  years  from  to-night,  and  four 
teen  years  from  to-night,  and  twenty-one  years  from 
to-night,  for  then,  sir,  you  will  have  come  to  your 
majority. 

I  don't  want  you  to  go  to  heaven.  We  don't  want 
you,  sir,  to  go  to  heaven.  We  want  you  here,  and— 
well,  the  influence  of  religion  ought  not  only  to  better 
fit  men  to  go  away  from  this  world  and  to  go  to  heaven, 
but  to  bring  more  of  heaven's  light  and  joy  and  beauty 
and  blessing  down  to  earth. 


WtJ  TING  FANG 

(CHINESE  MINISTER) 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOE,  MAY  6,  1908 

IT  is  eight  years  since  I  had  the  honor  of  being  your 
guest.  At  that  time,  although  I  was  a  stranger, 
you  received  me  with  open  arms  and  welcomed  and 
treated  me  almost  as  a  fellow-countryman.  Eight  years 
have  passed,  and  many  changes  have  taken  place,  many 
improvements,  as  I  can  see  in  this  city  and  in  the  city 
of  Washington.  Great  changes  have  also  taken  place 
in  my  country. 

One  of  the  gentlemen  asked  me  to  express  my  views 
of  the  United  States  and  the  American  people.  I 
thought  my  views  on  this  subject  were  known.  If  I 
did  n't  like  your  people,  if  I  had  not  been  admirably 
impressed  with  your  institutions,  and  I  may  say  en 
amoured  of  your  people,  I  can  assure  you  I  would  not 
have  come  here  a  second  time.  It  is  always  pleasant  to 
me  to  meet  with  your  people,  and  in  particular  to  meet 
with  old  friends  in  a  social  club  like  the  Lotos. 

Gentlemen,  much  has  been  said  about  the  reforms  in 
China.  Yes,  China  is  moving  forward.  China  has 
slumbered  for  many  centuries;  now  she  is  awake,  and 
she  is  moving  fast.  It  is  interesting  to  note  that  within 
the  last  few  years  our  ancient  mode  of  examination  for 
office  has  been  abolished,  and  the  examination  now  is 

364 


WU  TING  FANG  365 

conducted  in  a  different  way.  A  couple  of  years  ago  a 
number  of  students  who  had  studied  in  Japan,  in 
America  and  Europe,  went  to  Pekin  for  examination 
for  literary  degrees.  The  subjects  given  to  them  were 
modern  subjects.  The  themes  were  about  the  philos 
ophers  of  the  West.  I  may  mention  the  interesting 
fact  that  my  secretary,  who  is  here,  was  educated  in 
the  University  of  Virginia. 

Reference  has  been  made  to  the  fact  that  the  char 
acter  of  the  religion  of  Confucius  is  negative.  In  a 
sense  it  is  negative,  that  is  why  Confucianism  exists 
only  in  China.  "We  have  not  sent  missionaries  abroad. 
We  believe  in  the  maxim,  "Charity  begins  at  home," 
and  we  have  done  our  best  to  convert  our  people  to 
this  creed.  Now,  since  so  many  Chinese  come  into  for 
eign  countries,  it  is  time,  we  think,  that  we  should 
have  Confucian  churches  in  foreign  countries.  For 
this  reason  a  movement  is  on  foot  to  get  the  Chinese  in 
America  to  establish  a  Confucian  church  in  New  York. 
Gentlemen,  especially  the  two  Reverend  Gentlemen, 
you  need  not  be  alarmed.  We  are  negative  people ;  we 
establish  a  church  for  the  purpose  of  preaching  the 
doctrine  to  our  people.  We  don't  use  force,  we  don't 
send  battle-ships  to  compel  any  one  to  embrace  our 
religion. 

Gentlemen,  the  duty  of  a  minister  is  to  maintain 
friendly  relations  between  his  own  country  and  the 
country  to  which  he  is  accredited.  I  am  glad  to  find 
that  our  relations  are  most  friendly.  There  is  no  cloud 
on  the  political  horizon  between  China  and  your  coun 
try. 


JAMES  WHITFIELD  BASHFOBD 

(MISSIONARY  BISHOP  TO  CHINA) 

AT  THE  DINNEB  TO  WU  TING  FANG,  MAY  6,  1908 

THE  first  proof  of  the  new  intellectual  life  of  China 
is  found  in  the  revolution  in  education.  There  is 
only  one  aristocracy  in  China,  and  that  is  not  an  aris 
tocracy  of  wealth  or  of  birth,  but  of  education.  Under 
Chinese  customs  usually  only  persons  can  be  appointed 
to  office  who  hold  a  degree  won  in  the  great  examina 
tions  which  the  Chinese  government  conducts  to  test 
the  educational  qualifications  of  her  subjects.  "With 
very  few  exceptions,  all  young  men  can  offer  themselves 
for  those  examinations,  and  those  who  succeed  in  win 
ning  the  degree  become  the  intellectual  and  official 
aristocracy  of  the  nation. 

In  1903  the  dowager  empress  issued  a  decree  declar 
ing  that  at  the  close  of  ten  years  no  person  would  be 
put  upon  the  list  of  eligibles  for  office  whose  degree  did 
not  specify  that  he  had  mastered  the  Western  learning. 
Many  persons  regarded  this  decree  by  the  dowager 
empress  as  spectacular,  inasmuch  as  on  its  face  it  was 
not  to  go  into  effect  for  ten  years,  and  few  people  be 
lieved  that  it  would  ever  go  into  effect;  but  in  1905  a 
supplementary  decree  was  issued,  putting  the  reform 
into  immediate  effect.  These  two  decrees  do  not  pre 
scribe  that  every  future  official  must  have  the  Western 

366 


JAMES  WHITFIELD  BASHFORD     367 

learning,  for  there  are  not  sufficient  men  trained  in  the 
new  learning  to  furnish  officials;  hence  all  who  now 
hold  degrees  received  under  the  old  regime  are  eligible 
to  appointment.  But  all  future  degrees  must  certify  to 
the  holder 's  efficiency  in  the  Western  learning,  in  order 
to  make  him  eligible  to  official  appointment.  Already 
the  decree  has  been  put  into  operation  so  far  that  exam 
inations  have  been  held  in  Pekin  for  the  highest  degree, 
in  which  the  applicants  were  allowed  to  choose  the 
language  in  which  they  would  take  the  examinations, 
and  some  took  the  examination  in  English  instead  of 
Chinese.  This  is  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the 
empire.  Again,  competitive  examinations  in  Western 
subjects  have  been  held  in  leading  Chinese  cities  for 
the  selection  of  students  to  be  sent  to  America.  Thus, 
Western  learning  has  already  become  the  standard  of 
education  for  the  officials  of  the  empire.  It  was  the 
demonstration  in  1905  and  1906  of  the  genuineness  of 
the  educational  reform  which  sent  some  fifteen  thou 
sand  young  men  to  Japan  in  a  single  year  for  the 
Western  learning,  and  some  three  or  four  thousand 
more  to  Europe  and  America :  a  far  wider  and  swifter 
movement  in  education  than  the  Japanese  made  in  their 
eagerness  for  the  Western  learning,  a  far  larger  num 
ber  than  ever  went  from  America  to  Europe  for  uni 
versity  training  in  a  single  year.  This  reform,  which 
is  now  in  full  progress,  revolutionizes  the  intellectual 
training  which  has  prevailed  among  four  hundred  mil 
lion  people  for  twenty-five  hundred  years.  It  promises 
to  become  the  greatest  single  change  which  has  taken 
place  in  the  intellectual  history  of  mankind. 

Turning    to    political    progress,    the    metropolis    of 


368  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

northern  China,  with  a  population  of  a  million  and  a 
quarter,  in  July  held  the  first  municipal  election  ever 
known  in  the  history  of  the  Chinese  empire.  Yuan 
Shih  Kai,  the  man  of  power  in  China  to-day,  holds  that 
the  Chinese,  from  their  centuries  of  village  government 
and  of  guild  government,  are  far  more  ready  for  re 
publican  institutions,  and  indeed,  are  far  more  demo 
cratic  in  spirit,  than  the  western  world  dreams.  Hence 
he  is  urging  the  Chinese  government  to  adopt  a  consti 
tution.  In  order  to  prove  that  constitutional  govern 
ment  is  practicable,  he  has  established  municipal 
government  in  the  northern  metropolis  of  the  empire. 
Note  the  requirements  for  voting  in  the  first  city  in 
China  ever  holding  a  municipal  election:  each  voter 
must  be  a  male  citizen  twenty-five  years  of  age,  born  in 
Tientsin,  or  he  must  have  lived  in  Tientsin  for  five 
years  and  paid  taxes  on  two  thousand  taels ;  all  voters 
must  be  able  to  read  and  write.  These  four  classes  are 
debarred  the  franchise:  all  who  have  ever  failed  in 
business ;  all  who  are  now  engaged  in  any  disreputable 
business,  like  selling  opium,  etc.;  all  who  are  opium 
smugglers ;  and  Buddhists  and  Taoist  priests. 

Passing  through  Tientsin  last  fall,  I  saw  a  lecture- 
hall  in  which  perhaps  a  thousand  listeners  could  stand, 
and  was  told  that  a  half-dozen  such  halls  had  just  been 
opened  in  the  city,  in  which  illustrated  lectures  on 
Western  geography,  "Western  science,  Western  inven 
tions,  etc.,  are  delivered  two  or  three  times  a  week  to 
audiences  which  fill  the  halls  to  overflowing.  If 
Tientsin  persists  in  demanding  this  high  standard  of 
morality  and  intelligence  in  her  voters,  possibly  fifty 
years  hence  American  citizens  will  be  sending  delega- 


JAMES  WHITFIELD  BASHFORD     369 

tions  to  China  to  learn  the  secret  of  municipal  gov 
ernment. 

I  was  present  in  Pekin  that  momentous  Sunday  in 
September,  1905,  when  the  commissioners  who  were 
going  to  the  United  States  and  Europe  to  study  our 
institutions  were  to  leave  Pekin.  On  my  way  home 
from  a  preaching  service,  I  heard  the  explosion  which 
wrecked  the  train  and  wounded  His  Excellency  Wu 
Ting  Fang.  I  had  the  honor  of  calling  upon  him  a  day 
or  two  later  and  discussing  with  him  the  cause  of  this 
attempt  to  assassinate  the  commissioners.  We  both 
agreed  that  it  was  due  to  the  opposition  of  the  con 
servatives  to  the  commissioners  visiting  Europe  and 
America,  and  possibly  carrying  back  to  China  recom 
mendations  for  reform.  This  shows  that  at  the  time 
there  was  a  party  of  intense  conservatives  in  Pekin. 

Last  fall,  when  I  was  in  Pekin,  I  had  the  honor  of 
calling  upon  our  American  minister  to  China,  Mr.  W. 
W.  Rockhill.  I  remarked  that  from  such  reports  of 
the  two  hundred  newspapers  published  in  China  as  I 
received  from  some  Chinese  students  who  were  furnish 
ing  a  few  of  us  the  summary  of  Chinese  newspapers, 
there  seemed  then  to  be  no  defense  of  conservatism  by 
the  newspapers.  Mr.  Rockhill  immediately  answered: 
' '  There  is  no  conservative  party  to-day  among  the  offi 
cials  in  Pekin."  He  added  that  there  are  two  parties 
in  the  empire,  one  of  which  he  would  characterize  as 
the  Liberal  party  and  the  other  as  the  Radical  party. 
All  parties  believe  in  progress  and  are  sure  that  China 
must  immediately  adopt  great  and  far-reaching  re 
forms.  The  Liberals,  however,  believe  in  studying  the 
conditions  which  now  confront  the  empire,  and  striving 


370  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

to  adopt  such  reforms  as  will  prove  permanent  and  will 
not  result  either  in  a  revolution  or  a  reaction.  The 
Radicals,  upon  the  other  side,  are  committed  to  all,  any, 
and  every  kind  of  reform,  and  desire  these  reforms 
adopted  immediately. 

All  representatives  of  foreign  governments  and  all 
missionaries  in  China  are  in  sympathy  with  the  Liberal 
rather  than  with  the  Radical  party.  In  a  word,  China 
is  in  more  danger  to-day  from  revolution  than  from 
undue  conservatism. 

I  believe  that  if  we  will  strive  more  and  more  to  let 
the  Golden  Rule  govern  the  spirit  of  our  dealings,  po 
litical,  industrial,  and  commercial,  with  China,  that 
China  and  the  United  States  can  make  a  greater  civil 
ization  along  the  Pacific  Coast  than  any  other,  and 
one  that  will  dominate  the  globe. 


STEPHEN  S.  WISE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  WU  TING  FANG,  MAY  6,  1908 

I  WONDER  how  many  of  you  know  that  there  has 
been  a  Jewish  colony,  a  colony  made  up  of  my 
brother  Jews,  in  China,  for  more  than  two  thousand 
years,  a  settlement  which  began  about  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  before  the  present  era,  and  which  Jewish 
settlement  has  been  unchanged  for  now  more  than  two 
millennia. 

It  ought  not  to  be  necessary  to  say  that  my  Jewish 
cousins  or  brothers  in  China  have  not  prospered  in  a 
business  way.  There  are  three  countries  in  the  world 
in  which  the  Jew  cannot  get  along  in  the  business  sense. 
The  first  is  the  Chinese  empire ;  the  second  is  Scotland ; 
and  the  third  is  New  England. 

You  will  remember  the  story  of  the  Englishman  who 
was  being  rallied  upon  his  failure  in  business,  after  he 
had  gone  to  Aberdeen  to  live  and  sell  fish;  and  when 
he  was  asked,  "Why  have  n't  you  been  able  to  get 
along  and  be  successful?"  he  said,  "My  dear  fellow, 
think,  I  buy  from  the  Jews,  and  sell  to  the  Scotch. ' ' 

It  may  be  because  I  am  a  younger  brother  of  the 
great  teachers  of  history  of  another  age;  those  men 
who  dared  to  proclaim  twenty-six  and  twenty-eight 
hundred  years  ago,  "For  my  house  shall  be  called  a 
house  of  prayer  for  all  peoples" ;  it  may  be  that  because 
mine  is  a  religion  like  the  brotherhood  of  William  Lloyd 

371 


372  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Garrison,  my  own  country  has  awarded  me  humilia 
tion.  "We  have  witnessed  in  the  last  decade  the  awaken 
ing  of  the  far  East.  That  awakening  has  found 
illustration  in  our  learned  brother  to-night,  as  demon 
strated  by  the  triumphs  of  Japan,  and  that  is  another 
illustration  of  the  great  seething  unrest  of  the  mighty 
Chinese  empire. 

And  I  rejoice  that  that  awakening  has  come,  in  order 
that  you,  in  order  that  you  Westerners,  you  gentlemen 
of  the  Occidental  world,  may  begin  to  understand  how 
unworthy  of  you,  how  base  in  you,  it  is  to  speak  of 
Asiatics,  of  Chinese,  as  if  they  were  an  inferior  people. 
It  is  as  true  to-day  as  it  was  when  first  spoken,  "The 
light  has  come  out  of  the  East."  You  are  only  repay 
ing  in  part,  in  a  very  small  part,  the  debt  which  you 
can  never  wholly  pay  to  the  East. 

Gentlemen,  you  venture  sometimes  to  speak  deris 
ively  and  contemptuously  of  Asiatics.  Do  you  not  see 
that  nearly  all  the  precious  things  in  life  have  come  to 
us  from  the  great  East  ?  Who  are,  and  who  have  been, 
the  great  religious  teachers  of  the  world?  Confucius, 
Zoroaster,  Buddha,  Moses,  Mohammed,  Jesus,  every 
one  of  them  an  Asiatic.  I  know  that  there  are  German 
anti-Semites  to-day  who,  in  the  madness  of  their  anti- 
Jewish  delirium,  are  now  even  seeking  to  prove  that 
Jesus  was  not  a  Jew,  because  in  Nazareth  there  was  a 
large  settlement  of  Aryans.  Next  we  shall  be  hearing 
that  Paul  was  a  Frenchman  or  an  Italian,  or  that  Peter 
was  a  German  or  an  Irishman. 

I  have  heard  something  to-night  about  Confucius  and 
Confucianism.  I  wish  you  might  know,  as  I  have  come 
to  know,  in  part  from  the  inspiration  of  our  honored 


STEPHEN  S.  WISE  373 

guest,  what  a  mighty  moral,  religious  factor  Confucian 
ism  has  been  in  the  East;  Confucianism,  which  is  a 
religion  that  says  very  little  about  man's  duty  to  God, 
but  omits  nothing  concerning  man's  duty  to  man; 
a  religion  that  is  not  a  cocksure  unethical  theism,  but  a 
reverend  ethical  ecclesiasticism ;  a  religion  of  which  a 
great  Oxford  professor,  Mr.  Giles,  declares  that  it  is  a 
religion,  and  that  it  is  as  sincere,  as  earnest,  and  as 
noble  as  any  great  religion  in  the  world. 

We  of  the  Western  world,  of  Christendom,  to-day  face 
the  most  searching,  the  most  vital  problem  with  which 
it  has  had  to  deal  in  more  than  a  thousand  years.  Let 
me  explain  my  seemingly  strange  words.  China 
has  lived  up  to  the  Golden  Rule;  China  has  prac 
tised  the  nominal  Christian  art  of  non-resistance— and 
the  Western  world,  Christendom,  has  set  out,  as  it  were, 
to  point  out  to  China  the  folly  of  observing  the  rule  of 
non-resistance,  laid  down  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth;  with 
the  result  that  we  have  to-day  the  attempted  apportion 
ment  and  dismemberment  of  China  by  the  powers 
without. 

Gentlemen,  with  the  fullest  realization  of  the  serious 
ness  of  my  words,  I  say  to  you  that  the  dismemberment 
of— that  is  to  say,  the  securing  of  extra-territorial 
rights  in— China,  the  land-grabbing  of  China  by  the 
Western  Christian  powers,  is  the  gravest  possible  in 
dictment  of  Christianity. 

If  you  were  to  ask  me  to-night,  gentlemen,  * '  Of  what 
single  act  of  the  American  government  are  you  most 
proud  ? "  I  would  point  not  even  to  the  seizure  of  Cuba 
and  the  deliverence  of  the  Cubans  from  a  weak  but 
cruel  tyrant's  yoke;  I  would  point  to  the  repayment  of 


374  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  indemnity  which  the  United  States  received  from 
the  Chinese  government. 

That  was  a  greater  victory  than  the  victory  of  Port 
Arthur,  because  it  was  a  victory  not  over  others,  but 
over  ourselves.  "What  does  the  new  diplomacy  mean? 
The  diplomacy  of  the  Golden  Rule,  the  new  diplomacy, 
is  new  internationalism.  Do  you  not  know  that  we  have 
changed  the  old  saying,  "My  spear  shall  know  no 
brother,"  to  "My  brother,  whatever  his  race,  whatever 
his  color,  whatever  his  faith,  shall  know  no  spear. ' ' 

The  new  internationalism  means  this— the  recogni 
tion  of  the  motto  of  John  Quincy  Adams,  "My  country, 
may  she  always  be  successful,  but,  whether  successful 
or  not,  may  my  country  ever  be  in  the  right."  Then, 
too,  the  new  internationalism  means  just  this,  as  my 
last  word :  it  means  that  the  moral  law  is  not  forgotten 
at  national  boundaries;  it  means  that  the  Ten  Com 
mandments  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  are  just  as 
truly  binding  upon  us  in  our  international  as  in  our 
national,  domestic,  civic,  and  industrial  relations;  it 
means  that  the  Mount  Sinai  or  the  Mount  Sermon  is 
loftier  than  the  mightiest  people  upon  the  earth;  it 
means  that  the  commands,  ' '  Thou  shalt  not  covet ;  thou 
shalt  not  steal ;  thou  shalt  not  kill, ' '  are  binding  upon 
nations  as  well  as  individuals,  and  most  binding  upon 
the  strongest  and  the  mightiest  nations  of  the  world. 
Let  this  be  our  thought  to-night,  and  in  this  thought 
let  us  shake  hands  across  the  mighty  eastern  sea  and 
say: 

Our  flags  together  furled,  henceforward  no  other  strife 

Than  which  of  us  most  shall  help  the  world,  which  lead  the 
noblest  life. 


BAEON  KOGORO  TAKAHIEA 

(JAPANESE  AMBASSADOR) 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  DECEMBER  19,  1908 

I  FEEL  very  highly  honored  by  your  very  cordial 
invitation  to  be  your  guest  this  evening.  I  am  very 
much  gratified  to  enjoy  the  pleasant  company  of  so 
many  distinguished  gentlemen  of  the  great  metropolis. 
I  don't  feel  equal  to  replying  to  such  cordial  expressions 
of  sentiment  as  have  so  gracefully  been  made  by  your 
president,  but  I  assure  you,  if  Japan  has  succeeded  in 
achieving  anything  worthy  of  such  remarks,  it  is  prin 
cipally  due  to  the  friendly  action  taken  by  the  United 
States  through  Commodore  Perry  in  introducing  Japan 
to  the  comity  of  nations.  Ever  since  the  opening  of  our 
intercourse  we  have  been  trying  to  do  our  best  to 
reciprocate  the  friendship  exhibited  by  this  country. 
In  doing  so  we  have  always  thought  that  we  should  be 
able  some  day  to  repay  what  the  United  States  has  done 
for  us. 

We  have  passed  through  the  vicissitudes  of  life  in 
different  ways,  but  we  have  always  regarded  the  United 
States  as  our  best  friend,  and  we  look  to  the  United 
States  for  not  only  friendship  but  guidance.  I  cannot 
dwell  upon  such  circumstances,  there  is  not  time  enough 
for  me  to  do  it,  but  I  can  tell  you  that  what  you  have 
done  will  never  be  forgotten  by  our  people.  The  United 

375 


376  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

States  will  always  be  regarded  as  not  only  a  friendly 
nation,  but  as  the  best  guide  in  leading  Japan  and  her 
neighboring  countries  to  enjoy  the  benefits  of  Western 
civilization,  which  the  United  States  introduced  to  that 
part  of  the  world. 

When  I  lived  in  this  city  many  years  ago  I  used  to 
go  to  the  Harlem  River  for  fishing,  and  I  saw  that  the 
boatman  always  rowed  hardest  when  the  tide  was 
against  him ;  in  the  same  way,  I  now  see  that  a  diplomat 
speaks  much  when  his  affairs  are  not  in  good  shape. 

But,  as  things  are  between  the  United  States  and 
Japan,  there  is  nothing  to  warrant  much  speechmaking. 
I  fully  believe  I  am  not  mistaken  when  I  say  that  our 
relations  are  in  the  best  possible  condition.  I  think  we 
may  say  there  is  now  nothing  left  to  be  desired  in  the 
relations  of  our  two  countries. 

No  doubt  there  have  been  undesirable  incidents  oc 
curring  between  some  people  of  the  two  countries,  but 
they  were  local  affairs  and  in  no  way  to  be  regarded  as 
menacing  our  traditional  friendship. 

Too  much  importance  was  given  them  in  some  quar 
ters,  and  even  a  war  clamor  was  raised  by  a  few  people 
in  spite  of  the  sincere  good  will  existing  between  the 
two  governments. 

I  do  not  understand  why  mistaken  reports  should 
have  been  so  broadcast.  There  were  many  contradic 
tions  and  refutations  given  to  the  press  from  time  to 
time,  but  it  seems  that  people  did  n't  place  any  credence 
in  them ;  and,  thanks  to  the  sincerity  of  the  friendship 
existing  between  the  two  governments,  no  serious  con 
sequences  occurred. 

Shakespeare  denned  the  mission  of  the  so-called  dip- 


BARON  KOGORO  TAKAHIRA         377 

lomacy  so  many  centuries  ago  when  he  said  that  "the 
devil  knew  not  what  he  did  when  he  made  men  politic." 
Franklin  said,  "Honesty  is  the  best  policy. "  I  don't 
know  what  circumstances  led  him  to  make  such  an  as 
sertion.  But  from  it  American  diplomacy  has  found  a 
firm  foundation. 

I  took  the  opportunity,  at  a  dinner  given  in  my 
honor  on  my  arrival  here  some  months  ago,  to  declare 
that  there  is  no  art  in  our  game  of  diplomacy.  In  our 
international  transactions  I  can  most  firmly  repeat  the 
same  assertion,  and  that  there  is  no  such  word  as 
"  diplomacy "  as  popularly  defined.  The  declaration 
of  the  two  governments  recently  made  by  the  United 
States  and  Japan  in  regard  to  their  respective  policies 
in  China  and  the  Pacific  is  a  good  example.  It  is 
simply  a  reaffirmation  of  what  was  understood  between 
them  years  ago,  and  there  is  practically  nothing  which 
was  not  hitherto  declared  between  them.  It  is  a  trans 
action  between  trusted  friends.  It  requires  no  for 
mality  to  legalize  the  instrument. 

Gentlemen,  I  thank  you  most  sincerely  for  the  cordial 
reception  you  are  good  enough  to  extend  to  me.  I  wish 
you  happiness  and  prosperity. 


MELVILLE  E.  STONE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  BAEON  KOGOEO  TAKAHIEA, 
DECEMBEE  19,  1908 

1WAS  impressed  by  the  remark  of  Mr.  Low  that  in 
this  case  we  had  better  go  to  the  Genesis  of  things. 
I  was  reminded  of  this  by  a  telegram  which  came  to  us 
last  night  and  was  printed  in  this  morning's  papers, 
the  story  of  the  rescue  of  five  Japanese  sailors  on  an 
island  on  the  Pacific  coast  by  an  American  ship,  and 
that  turned  my  mind  back  to  the  Genesis  of  this  busi 
ness  and  of  the  entrance  of  Japan  into  the  family  of 
nations.  Well  may  the  Japanese  pay  tribute  to  our 
Navy !  There  is  a  dramatic  situation  there,  and  a  poetic 
justice.  In  the  old  time  we  were  enemies  because  we 
were  strangers.  The  Japanese  did  not  know  us,  and 
therefore  we  were  l '  the  foreign  devils. ' ' 

But  we  had  an  interest  out  there.  We  had  nineteen 
million  dollars  invested  in  whaling-ships  traversing  the 
Pacific  Ocean.  Now  and  then  one  would  run  on  the 
Japanese  coast  and  be  wrecked,  and  the  Japanese,  not 
knowing  these  American  whalers,  regarded  them  as 
enemies.  The  hour  came  when  it  was  necessary  that 
something  should  be  done  to  save  our  sailing  ships  and 
sailors  who  went  out  there,  and  then  in  that  hour  the 
American  Navy  came  to  the  front,  not  for  war,  but  for 
the  highest  and  holiest  motive. 

378 


MELVILLE   E.   STONE  379 

Commodore  Aulick  of  our  Navy  suggested  to  our  then 
secretary  of  state,  Daniel  Webster,  that  an  expedition 
be  sent  out  there.  The  thing  was  considered,  but  noth 
ing  was  done  for  two  years,  and  then  another  com 
modore,  Perry,  suggested  that  the  thing  be  done,  and 
induced  him  to  do  it.  The  Navy  of  America  is  respon 
sible  for  the  opening  of  Japan. 

I  have  in  mind  two  episodes;  and  I  shall  try  to  be 
brief,  Mr.  President,  because  I  know  that  my  friend 
Mr.  Wise  is  to  follow  me.  The  Japanese  government 
immediately  listened  to  the  demand  of  Commodore 
Perry,  and  two  or  three  great  men  of  Japan  seconded 
Perry  and  opened  that  country,  against  great  obstacles. 
Finally  they  succeeded,  through  Townsend  Harris, 
whose  name  should  be  immortal,  in  negotiating  a  treaty. 
Well,  it  went  along  until  1863.  Japan  was  then  having 
her  troubles  in  regard  to  a  certain  Shogun,  and  some 
American  warships  were  passing  through  the  Japanese 
sea,  and  were  fired  on,  but  the  Japanese  government 
was  in  no  way  responsible.  It  was  done  by  the  rebels. 
Nevertheless,  we  demanded  immediate  reparation  and 
indemnity.  But  I  want  to  say  something :  that  I  belong 
to  a  country  that  never  fought  to  establish  or  carry 
commerce  anywhere,  that  never  made  war  except  in  the 
interest  of  humanity.  Well,  this  Shogun  fired  his  shot, 
and  we  demanded  reparation  and  indemnity,  and  the 
Japanese  government  paid  us;  and  it  ran  along  until 
1874,  when  I  happened  to  be  in  Washington,  and  I 
had  a  long  talk  at  the  time  with  General  Grant  in  re 
spect  to  this  outrageous  indemnity  we  had  asked  from 
Japan,  and  then  General  Grant  did  a  thing  of  which  I 
am  supremely  proud.  He  sent  a  message  to  Congress 


380  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

recommending  it  to  pass  an  act  refunding  to  Japan  that 
indemnity,  on  condition  that  it  be  used  for  the  educa 
tion  of  Japanese  scholars.  In  the  language  of  a  pro 
fessor  of  Harvard,  that  was  a  great  blunder, 'because 
your  students  get  two  dollars7  worth  of  education  for 
one  dollar's  worth  of  pay. 

Now,  the  president  said  I  might  say  something  in 
respect  to  the  Japanese-Russian  war.  Gentlemen,  we 
stand  on  historic  ground.  This  club  itself  bore  its  part 
in  that  great  work.  As  the  Portsmouth  Conference  was 
in  session,  there  came  an  hour  when  positive  instruc 
tions  were  issued  to  the  Russian  delegates  to  retire  and 
leave  on  a  certain  Tuesday.  All  of  the  questions  at 
issue  had  been  discussed  at  great  length  and  a  con 
clusion  reached  on  all  save  one,  the  question  of  in 
demnity.  The  Russian  representatives  were  instructed 
from  St.  Petersburg  to  pay  no  indemnity  under  any 
circumstances,  and  they  were  instructed  to  leave  the 
conference  and  break  it  up  on  the  following  Tuesday. 
On  the  Sunday  preceding  I  received  a  telephone  mes 
sage  from  a  distinguished  Japanese  representative, 
asking  me  to  lunch  with  him.  I  went,  and  we  discussed 
the  situation  at  length,  and  then  Japan  rose  to  the  very 
highest  level  of  statesmanship  or  humanity,  rose  to  a 
level  which  America  might  well  emulate,  which  any 
nation  might  emulate.  I  shall  never  forget  what  this 
gentleman  said  to  me:  ""We  can  never  be  put  in  the 
position  before  the  world  of  fighting  this  war  for 
money ;  and  if  the  question  resolves  itself  into  a  ques 
tion  of  indemnity,  Japan,  with  all  her  sufferings,  all  her 
expenditures;  Japan,  with  no  large  revenues;  Japan, 
struggling  after  having  expended  eight  hundred  mil- 


MELVILLE  E.   STONE  381 

lion  dollars  in  this  war,  will  make  peace  without  taking 
a  dollar  of  indemnity. ' ' 

A  suggestion  was  made  that  perhaps  an  intermediary 
could  be  found,  and,  determined  as  I  was  to  communi 
cate  that  fact  to  the  President  of  the  United  States,  I 
went  that  afternoon  to  Oyster  Bay.  Before  I  went  I  tele 
phoned  to  Lenox,  where  Baron  Veschin,  a  German 
charge,  was  stopping,  and  asked  him  to  come  to  this 
club,  and  he  came  at  five  o'clock.  I  went  to  Oyster 
Bay,  and  a  telegram  was  prepared  to  the  Emperor  of 
Germany,  asking  him  to  intervene.  I  came  back,  and 
we,  the  baron  and  I,  went  upstairs  in  this  house,  and 
the  upshot  was  that  that  telegram  was  sent  to  the  Em 
peror  of  Germany,  and  he  communicated  with  the  Czar, 
and  said  to  the  world  that  Japan  was  not  fighting  for 
money. 

I  was  deeply  impressed  by  one  phrase  in  Baron  Taka- 
hira's  remarks— deeply  impressed.  He  said,  "We  look 
to  the  United  States  for  guidance.  You  introduced  us 
to  the  family  of  nations,  and  we  look  to  the  United 
States  for  guidance/'  Gentlemen,  that  puts  upon  the 
United  States,  upon  every  citizen  of  the  United  States, 
a  tremendous  responsibility,  and  I  ask  you  if  it  does 
not  behoove  all  of  us  to  live  up  to  this  responsibility. 
I  say  now,  as  I  have  said  before  in  public,  there  is  no 
genuine  ''yellow  peril,"  except  the  peril  of  the  yellow 
press. 


JOHN  S.  WISE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  BAEON  KOGOKO  TAKAHIEA, 
DECEMBEE  19,  1908 

/GENTLEMEN,  when  you  talk  about  Genesis,  you 
VJ  forget  that  Japan  is  the  cause  of  the  discovery  of 
America. 

Christopher  Columbus  would  never  have  sailed  on 
his  western  voyage  except  to  get  to  the  fabled  land  of 
Zipango.  In  his  dream  of  journeying  right  to  the 
west,  he  had  consulted  the  greatest  geographers  of  the 
day,  and  the  greatest  of  all  was  Toscanelli,  who  showed 
him  his  maps  with  all  the  details  showing  the  fabled 
isle  of  Zipango,  and  filled  him  with  the  stories  of  that 
wonderful  land  of  gold,  the  dream  of  commerce,  that 
commerce  which  is  spoken  of  as  something  new.  It  was 
not  an  inspiration  to  discover  the  western  continent, 
for  in  the  maps  of  Toscanelli,  delivered  into  the  hands 
of  Christopher  Columbus,  the  island  of  Zipango  was 
placed  in  the  west,  and  the  maps  showed  no  land  be 
tween  western  Europe  and  that  great  golden  territory. 

Columbus  sailed  on  a  search  for  Japan.  Columbus 
went  on  his  untried  voyage  unaware  that  a  great  con 
tinent  lay  between  western  Europe  and  Japan,  and 
when  he  landed  on  the  island  of  San  Salvador  he  mis 
took  it  for  Zipango,  and  thought  that  he  had  discov 
ered  that  great  land.  Not  only  that,  but  after  the 

382 


JOHN  S.  WISE  383 

discovery  of  this  continent,  which  lay  between  the 
fabled  land  of  Zipango  and  Europe,  the  discoveries  of 
the  great  voyager  were  heralded  first  as  the  discovery 
of  the  land  of  his  dreams. 

I  have  heard  what  has  been  said  here,  and  it  has 
astonished  me  that  no  gentleman  has  referred  to  the 
fact  that  at  the  bottom  of  the  discovery  of  America  lay 
the  search  for  the  commerce  of  Japan,  which  has  come 
at  a  later  day  in  our  little  brief  span  of  life. 

I  remember  the  distinguished  statesman  who  is  our 
honored  guest  when  he  and  I  were  both  young.  He  was 
then  the  secretary  of  the  legation,  and  voted  the  most 
fascinating  little  secretary  in  all  our  national  capital. 
Let  me  say  to  the  baron  that  the  affection  between 
America  and  his  people  is  natural  and  it  is  progressive, 
and  it  is  the  best  security  which  his  country  has  for  a 
permanent  peace,  for  we  realize  the  strength,  the  ad 
vance,  the  power  of  that  wonderful  nation.  We  are 
not  afraid  of  them.  We  are  not  afraid  of  any  one 
on  top  of  this  earth,  and  we  believe  we  can  whip  any 
nation  in  the  world.  It  may  be  bragging  to  say  so,  but 
it  is  God's  truth. 

That,  sir,  is  the  surest  guarantee  that  you  have  that 
this  other  self-respecting,  progressive  nation  looks  not 
upon  the  struggles  and  the  advance  of  the  Japanese 
with  an  eye  of  jealousy,  but  that  we  are  proud  to  recog 
nize  another  nation  arising  from  nothingness  into  prom 
inence,  as  our  own  nation  has  done.  That  is  the 
foundation  of  our  friendship.  First,  we  are  friends; 
second,  we  have  got  nothing  to  fight  about;  and  third, 
neither  one  of  us  wants  to  fight  the  other. 


FEANK  E.  LAWEENCE 

AT  THE  DINNEB  TO  CHAELES  E.  HUGHES, 
JANUAEY  30,  1909 

r INHERE  must  be  a  tinge  of  sadness  about  our  pro- 
JL  ceedings  to-night,  for  we  realize  that  when  our 
voices  die  away  here  this  evening,  the  echoes  in  this 
house  will  be  raised  no  more,  and  these  rooms  will  be 
closed  forever. 

It  is  a  climax,  both  honorable  and  delightful,  that 
the  last  dinner  of  the  Lotos  Club  in  this  old  house 
should  be  given  in  honor  of  the  Chief  Magistrate  of  this 
State. 

New  York  is  proud  of  its  governor.  His  presence 
here  reminds  us  that  we  are  members  of  a  very  great 
commonwealth.  In  our  system  of  government,  the  State 
is  so  far  overshadowed  by  the  Nation,  that  the  impor 
tance  of  the  State  is  often  lost  sight  of  in  contemplating 
the  aggregation  of  the  States ;  yet  were  this  an  entirely 
separate  community,  New  York,  with  an  area  about  the 
size  of  England,  with  wonderful  natural  resources, 
with  enormous  wealth,  and  with  eight  millions  of  the 
most  progressive  and  intelligent  people  upon  the  earth, 
would  take  high  rank  as  an  independent  nation. 

It  is  well,  sometimes,  to  stop  and  think  of  the  posi 
tion  of  the  individual  State  in  our  great  federation  of 
States;  and  I  think  I  use  almost  the  words  of  the 

384 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  385 

Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  when  I  say  that  in 
so  far  as  the  powers  of  a  State  in  this  Union  are  not 
limited  by  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  each 
State  is  a  sovereign  State,  with  all  the  attributes  of  the 
most  absolute  government  upon  the  face  of  the  earth. 

The  people  of  this  country  pay  little  heed  to  mere 
official  rank.  One  may  be  clothed  in  all  the  panoply  of 
office,  and  yet  fail  to  arouse  popular  esteem.  The  suc 
cess  of  a  man  with  the  American  people  depends  on  his 
own  individuality,  and  upon  the  ability  of  his  character 
to  stand  the  test  of  the  fierce  light  that  beats  upon 
public  station. 

We  respect  public  office  because  we  are  law-abiding 
men ;  but  it  takes  the  qualities  of  the  individual  man  to 
evoke  enthusiasm  or  affection.  We  honor  devotion  to 
the  public  service.  We  honor  such  unqualified  courage 
as  we  have  lately  seen  upon  the  part  of  our  Chief  Ex 
ecutive.  We  honor  and  approve  the  capacity  to  ad 
vance  the  cause  of  good  government,  but  while  we 
ought  always  to  pay  due  respect  to  the  office  of  the 
Governor  of  the  State  of  New  York,  yet  that  respect  is 
greatly  enhanced  while  the  office  is  filled  by  such  a  man 
as  Governor  Hughes. 

This,  gentlemen,  is  a  non-political  club.  I  don't 
know  how  its  members  voted  at  the  last  election,  nor 
am  I  privileged  to  inquire.  Yet  with  respect  to  the 
majority  of  them,  a  great  majority  of  them,  I  think  I 
might  make  a  rather  shrewd  guess.  There  are  men 
here  of  all  shades  of  opinion ;  but  whatever  our  political 
beliefs,  we  all  rejoice  in  whatever  makes  for  the  public 
welfare,  and  none  of  us  can  fail  to  admire  the  career 
and  achievements  of  Governor  Hughes. 


386  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

He  entered  upon  the  discussion  of  the  questions  in 
volved  in  the  last  presidential  campaign,  known  prob 
ably  only  in  his  own  and  a  few  neighboring  States.  He 
emerged  from  that  discussion  a  conspicuous  national 
figure,  a  position  from  which,  I  venture  to  predict,  he 
will  find  it  difficult  to  dislodge  himself  for  the  future. 

New  York  has  in  its  time  given  five  occupants  to  the 
presidential  chair;  and  should  this  State  within  the 
next  few  years  be  called  upon  to  sacrifice  another  of  its 
sons,  the  man  is  not  far  to  seek.  And  it  seems  to  me, 
gentlemen,  and  I  believe  it  will  seem  to  you,  that  a 
career  so  solidly  founded,  so  rich  with  fine  achievement 
and  high  aspiration,  ought  not  to  be  permitted  to  stop 
even  with  the  governorship  of  the  State  of  New  York. 

But,  gentlemen,  presidential  elections  are  far  away; 
and  we  are  not  here  to  enter  upon  a  political  theme. 
"We  are  here  to  greet  the  governor  and  the  man,  and  it 
is  an  abundant  honor  to  the  Lotos  Club  that  now,  after 
almost  forty  years  of  life,  it  should  be  thought  fit  to 
receive  in  this  way  the  Chief  Executive  of  our  State. 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES 

(GOVERNOR  OF  THE  STATE  OF  NEW  YORK) 

AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  JANUAEY  30,  1909 

I  AM  very  proud  of  the  distinction  that  you  have 
conferred  upon  me  in  permitting  me  to  share  in  the 
honors  which  have  been  conferred  in  days  past  in  these 
rooms,  so  rich  in  the  echoes  of  eloquence.  I  regret  with 
you  that  you  must  leave  them;  and  I  am  glad,  indeed, 
that  before  you  part  from  a  place  so  rich  in  memories, 
it  has  become  my  privilege  to  join  with  you  in  the 
courtesy  and  hospitality  of  such  an  occasion  as  this. 

A  high  dignitary  of  the  church  said  to  me  the  other 
night  that  there  was  this  difference  that  might  be  noted 
between  distinguished  denominations.  The  Presby 
terians  don't  care  what  you  do,  so  long  as  you  believe 
with  them;  the  Methodists  don't  care  what  you  believe, 
so  long  as  you  do  what  is  right ;  and  the  Episcopalians 
don't  care  what  you  believe  or  do,  so  long  as  you  join 
their  church. 

I  am  very  glad  to  join  your  church,  and  have  you 
throw  the  mantle  of  courtesy  over  what  I  have  done  as 
well  as  over  what  I  have  believed  and  still  believe.  We 
are  not  here  to-night  to  suggest  differences  in  political 
opinion,  or  anything  which  might  permit  any  diver 
gence.  "We  are  here  as  loyal  citizens  of  the  great  State 
of  New  York.  I  have  heard  it  said  frequently  that  an 

387 


388  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

optimist  was  a  man  who  had  just  met  a  pessimist.  I  have 
inverted  that  proposition  because  I  think  the  inversion 
is  better  than  the  original.  But  I  think  an  optimist  is  a 
man  who  has  just  had  the  pleasure  of  dining  with  the 
members  of  the  Lotos  Club.  And  you  will  understand 
me  if  in  this  presence  I  view  with  entire  satisfaction 
and  confidence  the  future  of  the  Empire  State. 

I  am  somewhat  divided  in  my  emotions  as  I  contem 
plate  the  citizenship  of  New  York  and  the  accomplish 
ments  of  the  past.  We  have  indeed  the  greatest  reason 
for  gratification  in  what  has  been  achieved.  It  is  worth 
while  to  be  elected  governor  to  become  intimately  ac 
quainted  with  the  State  of  New  York ;  and  I  should  be 
willing  to  go  through  again  what  I  have  been  through 
in  the  last  two  years,  for  the  satisfaction  of  having  an 
opportunity  of  knowing  well  the  different  communities 
which  make  up  this  State,  from  north  to  south  and 
from  east  to  west.  No  man  who  knows  them  can  have 
any  doubt  as  to  the  future  of  the  commonwealth.  It  is 
secure,  because  of  the  intelligence  and  patriotism  of  the 
people  that  compose  it.  And  in  no  gathering  would  it 
be  possible  to  find  a  better  representation  of  the  intel 
ligence  and  high-minded  sentiment  of  that  people  than 
in  this  gathering  that  does  me  the  pleasure  to  appear 
to-night. 

I  wish  it  were  in  my  power  to  do  all  that  the  gov 
ernor  of  the  State  ought  to  do  in  recognizing  the 
various  offers  of  hospitality  which  are  so  generously 
bestowed.  Nothing  is  more  embarrassing  to  me  than 
the  necessity  of  constantly  declining  the  very  kind 
offers  that  are  made  from  various  parts  of  the  State; 
and  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  I  spend  a  goodly 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  389 

portion  of  each  day  in  explaining  that  I  am  only 
one  man  and  not  a  hundred  men,  and  that  it  is  impos 
sible  for  me,  in  the  time  at  my  disposal,  to  do  more 
than  a  very  little  in  accepting  the  hospitality  that  is 
tendered  me. 

But  the  Lotos  Club  is  distinguished  not  only  in  the 
personnel  of  its  membership,  but  in  the  character  of  its 
meetings  and  the  quality  of  its  dinners.  And  I  con 
sider  it  one  of  the  best  bits  of  good  fortune  that  has 
come  to  me  that  I  was  not  too  late  to  join  with  you  in 
this  historic  building  in  a  festal  occasion  of  this  sort. 

Now,  while  we  are  considering  the  glories  of  the  past 
of  the  State,  we  must  not  be  unmindful  of  the  future. 
As  I  have  said,  I  am  constantly  oppressed  by  two  emo 
tions,  one  of  pride  and  one  of  ambition.  When  I  look 
at  the  commercial  interests  of  the  State,  at  the  ability 
that  is  represented  in  the  colossal  financial  undertak 
ings  that  are  here  in  evidence,  I  am  amazed  at  the 
extraordinary  concentration  of  power  and  strength  in 
the  great  State  of  New  York.  It  is  indeed  an  Empire 
State. 

I  don't  need  to  remind  you  of  what  we  have 
achieved.  It  is  written  on  every  hand.  It  is  written  in 
our  great  financial  institutions,  the  security  of  which  is 
the  bulwark  of  the  republic.  It  is  written  in  our  differ 
ent  big  commercial  and  industrial  enterprises.  No 
where  in  this  favored  land  can  more  be  found  of 
promise  with  regard  to  power  and  intelligence  and 
actual  accomplishment  than  is  employed  in  business  in 
the  State  of  New  York.  And  then  I  turn  to  the  other 
side,  and  I  think  of  what  still  remains  to  be  done.  My 
friends,  I  don't  care  whether  you  join  my  church  or 


390  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

not,  I  want  you  to  believe  what  is  right,  and  stand  for 
what  is  right,  and  make  this  great  State  worthy  to  be  a 
free  community. 

We  are  here  gathered  in  the  metropolis  of  this  State, 
a  State  of  splendid  possibilities,  in  which,  as  you  know, 
much  remains  yet  to  be  accomplished.  I  don't  speak 
of  extraordinary  enterprises  requiring  aggregations  of 
capital;  I  speak  of  the  discharge  of  those  functions  of 
government  which  are  familiar,  and  in  connection  with 
which  we  find  the  true  test  of  the  quality  of  our  citizen 
ship.  You  know  a  great  portion  of  our  people  know 
very  little  of  that  which  concerns  men  in  the  ordinary 
activities  of  life.  They  see  our  judicial  processes  in  the 
work  of  our  inferior  criminal  courts.  They  see  our 
educational  work  in  that  which  is  made  familiar  by  our 
common  schools.  They  see  government  as  it  is  repre 
sented  by  the  policeman  and  by  the  magistrate.  It  is 
not  really  in  the  fine  affairs  of  the  best  educated  that 
we  find  the  truest  test  of  our  civilization.  It  is  in  the 
manner  in  which  the  ordinary  functions  of  government 
are  discharged  in  connection  with  the  ordinary  activi 
ties  of  life. 

Look  at  the  wonderful  opportunities  for  education. 
I  suppose  there  has  never  been  a  time  when  we  have 
had  greater  reason  for  pride  than  now,  in  view  of  the 
opportunities  that  are  afforded  our  youth,  of  whatever 
degree,  to  obtain  a  reasonable  education.  But  when 
you  reflect,  you  are  distressed  by  the  fact  that  a  very 
large  proportion  of  our  youth  are  leaving  our  common 
schools  before  they  are  fitted  for  any  ordinary  work  in 
life.  That  is  a  very  distressing  but  remediable  condi 
tion.  We  have  n't  yet  begun  to  understand  what  is  the 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  391 

duty  of  the  State  with  regard  to  the  preparation  of  our 
boys  and  girls  for  proper  fields  of  usefulness. 

I  am  not  one  of  those  who  desire  to  see  an  extension 
of  the  functions  of  the  State  in  untried  fields,  or  who 
would  forget  the  common  failings  of  our  human  nature 
and  suppose  that  by  concentration  of  authority  we 
could  solve  that  problem.  You  will  find,  in  connection 
with  our  educational  work,  a  great  opportunity  for 
advancement.  We  should  make  our  elementary  courses 
of  such  a  character  that  the  ordinary  student  would  see 
that  the  prosecution  of  the  entire  course  was  worth 
while.  We  must  realize  that  to  bring  our  young  men 
and  women  into  proper  opportunities  for  usefulness  is 
a  proper  branch  of  our  educational  equipment.  We 
have  only  begun  to  develop  our  common  schools,  and 
this  is  but  one  phase  of  our  activities. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  processes  of  our  courts. 
We  are  proud  of  the  judicial  work  and  the  eminent 
men  who  have  adorned  our  bench,  and  no  one  more 
than  I  recognizes  the  respect  that  is  due  to  the  author 
ity  of  the  courts  and  the  necessity  for  increasing  that 
respect  if  we  have  surely  founded  our  free  institutions. 
But  there  is  a  lamentable  lack  of  propriety  and  in 
dustry  in  connection  with  the  work  of  our  lower  courts, 
particularly  our  criminal  courts ;  and  we  must  see  to  it 
in  this  city  and  throughout  the  State  that  by  improve 
ment  in  the  machinery  we  shall  secure  a  better  adminis 
tration  of  justice  in  these  courts,  which  touch  perhaps 
two-thirds  of  all  our  population. 

It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  some  of  our  judicial 
processes  at  this  time  are  a  disgrace  to  civilization.  We 
find,  to  a  very  large  extent,  our  courts  crammed  with 


392  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

negligence  cases.  We  find  employers  paying  large 
sums  for  insurance  against  liability  on  their  part  as 
employers.  We  find  that  perhaps  only  thirty  per  cent, 
of  all  the  sums  thus  paid  for  this  insurance  ever  reach 
those  who  are  actually  injured  and  incapacitated  from 
work.  We  find,  in  the  prosecution  of  our  ordinary 
processes  of  justice,  attorneys  receiving  from  thirty  to 
fifty  per  cent,  of  all  that  may  be  collected  in  connection 
with  certain  classes  of  injuries. 

This  is  a  standing  indictment  of  our  present  methods, 
and  we  must  by  observation  and  careful  analysis  find 
out  in  time  what  can  properly  be  done  to  remedy  such 
an  obvious  defect. 

We  are  at  the  beginning,  gentlemen,  of  our  civiliza 
tion.  It  is  easy  for  us,  gathered  together  on  occasions 
like  this,  when  men  of  ability  and  talent  and  a  fair 
degree  of  prosperity  may  congratulate  themselves  upon 
their  individual  accomplishments,  to  forget  how  far 
short  the  sum  total  of  those  accomplishments  is  of 
what  they  should  be.  We  must  constantly  be  looking 
to  the  future.  We  must  hitch  our  wagon  to  a  star. 

I  believe  in  idealism.  I  believe  in  holding  firm  to  the 
ideals  of  this  republic.  They  are  ideals  closely  asso 
ciated  with  freedom  and  individual  opportunity. 
Strongly  as  I  believe  in  the  regulation  of  those  enter 
prises  which  affect  the  public  interests,  I  recognize  with 
all  of  you  the  supreme  importance  of  holding  out  to 
our  youth  the  reward  for  perseverance  and  honest 
effort.  The  time  is  not  far  distant  when  we  shall  re 
gard  it  as  little  short  of  a  disgrace  that  we  should  ever 
have  existed  in  conditions  like  these. 

We  have,  in  addition,  our  great  public  works.    We 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  393 

desire  to  make  communication  more  easy.  "We  want  the 
avenues  of  trade  opened.  We  do  not  desire  competi 
tion,  unjust  and  improper,  with  enterprises  which  have 
been  established  by  hard  work  and  conspicuous  ability, 
but  we  do  want  the  commerce  of  the  future  to  have 
abundant  scope  and  to  have  that  healthy  activity  which 
must  depend  in  the  last  analysis  upon  absolute  freedom 
of  intercommunication.  Therefore  it  is  that  I  am  very 
desirous  that  the  public  works  of  the  State  connected 
with  our  artificial  waterways  should  be  intelligently 
prosecuted.  "We  want  our  water-power  developed.  I 
have  seldom  seen  any  more  severe  indictment  of  a  civil 
ized  community  than  that  which  has  been  presented  in 
connection  with  the  report  of  our  water-supply  com 
missioners  with  regard  to  the  water-power  which  is 
daily  running  to  waste  in  this  State.  These  are  matters 
which  must  receive  our  attention. 

Now,  in  connection  with  all  this  work,  where  the 
State  is  desired  to  make  progress  in  the  interest  of  all 
the  citizens  of  the  State,  what  is  essential?  It  is  abso 
lutely  essential  that  we  should  have  faithful  representa 
tion.  I  ask  no  one  to  take  account  of  particular  plans 
or  to  abdicate  his  convictions.  I  have  never  asked  a 
single  man  connected  with  the  State  government  to 
surrender  his  convictions  to  me  for  any  price  or  under 
any  conditions.  I  have  a  profound  confidence  in  the 
merit  of  argument  and  in  the  presentation  of  sound 
reasoning.  Despite  what  has  been  said  with  regard  to 
the  necessary  extension  of  opportunity  in  the  public 
schools,  we  have  great  reason  for  congratulation  upon 
the  wide  extension  that  we  note  of  the  intelligence  of 
our  people. 


394  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Never  before  have  there  been  so  many  voters  in  the 
community  who  knew  what  they  were  voting  for.  Never 
has  there  been  a  time  when  there  was  so  much  actual 
knowledge  of  existing  facts  and  such  a  wide  diffusion 
of  information.  But  with  all  that,  we  must  constantly 
endeavor  to  give  the  widest  possible  play  to  that  intelli 
gence  and  to  the  sound  public  opinion  which  results 
from  that  diffusion  of  information.  I  want  to  see  the 
methods  of  the  blacklist  and  the  boycott  in  connection 
with  our  political  parties  done  away  with.  I  want  to 
see  the  time  pass  when  anybody  can  assume  the  role  of 
dictator  of  a  free  city.  I  do  not  care  what  your  politics 
may  be,  whether  you  agree  with  me  or  not,  I  simply 
stand  for  the  free  expression  of  the  will  of  the  people 
through  the  party  system,  in  order  that  every  leader 
ship  and  every  representative  may  stand  upon  the 
expressed  will  of  the  constituency  represented. 

And  therein  I  see  the  hope  of  the  community.  We 
are  not  born  to  servitude  of  any  character.  "We  are  not 
in  any  way  committed  to  this  man  or  that  man.  The 
happiest  day  for  the  member  of  the  legislature  is  when 
he  can  say:  "I  have  done  my  duty,  and  I  am  ready  to 
account  to  those  who  elected  me. "  It  is  the  salvation  of 
the  public  officer.  Now,  the  matter  is  not  one  of  per 
sonal  consequence  to  me.  Nothing  I  regret  more  than 
alignment  of  so-called  Hughes  men  and  anti-Hughes 
men.  I  am  not  an  issue.  It  makes  no  personal  differ 
ence  to  me  what  becomes  of  any  particular  controversy 
with  regard  to  matters  of  debate,  so  long  as  I  can  make 
sure  that  I  am  right  and  that  time  will  vindicate  the 
position  that  has  been  taken. 

What  I  am  most  concerned  with  is  the  progress  and 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  395 

prosperity  of  the  great  State  of  which  we  are  all  so 
proud.  I  want  to  see  our  public  works  conducted  with 
the  utmost  efficiency.  I  want  to  see  opportunities  for 
education  enlarged.  I  want  to  see  the  law's  delays 
diminished.  I  want  to  see  our  courts  relieved  of  bur 
dens  unjustly  thrown  upon  them  by  a  system  which 
conduces  to  the  benefit  of  ambulance-chasers  and  of 
particular  sets  of  attorneys,  and  has  little  for  the  benefit 
of  the  injured  or  the  workingman. 

I  desire  to  see  politics  free  and  pure  so  far  as  human 
nature  will  permit.  Do  not  suppose  that  I  cherish  any 
delusion  with  regard  to  either  politics  or  human  nature. 
I  was  not  born  yesterday. 

The  longer  I  live,  the  more  persuaded  I  become,  of 
the  necessity,  for  every  man's  comfort,  of  the  possession 
of  true  philosophy.  The  happiest  moments,  perhaps, 
that  I  enjoy  are  in  the  midnight  hour  when  I  read  the 
discourses  of  Epictetus.  No,  we  are  not  contemplating 
an  Utopia.  It  is  not  that  we  desire  to  press  men  beyond 
what  they  can  normally  achieve.  It  is  simply  that  we 
should  have  a  recognition  of  our  opportunities  as  citi 
zens  and  our  duty  as  citizens  of  the  great  State  that  we 
are  so  fortunate  in  having  our  citizenship  in. 

Any  one  who  knows  the  State  of  New  York  knows 
that  there  is  a  great  revival  of  interest  in  everything 
pertaining  to  our  civic  relations.  Some  call  this  dis 
content,  some  decry  it  as  unwholesome  agitation.  My 
friends,  it  is  neither  discontent  nor  agitation  in  an 
unpleasant  sense.  It  is  simply  an  awakening,  because 
the  people  are  coming  to  their  own,  and  they  will  get 
their  own.  It  is  simply  that  we  have  begun  to  realize 
that  with  the  extension  of  the  activities  of  the  State  it  is 


396  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

absolutely  essential  to  have  men  who  are  loyal  to  the 
State  in  every  department  of  State  effort. 

They  are  throwing  open  organizations  for  the  pur 
pose  of  commercial  improvement.  They  are  as  proud 
of  talent  as  our  American  people  ever  have  been.  You 
go  to  St.  Lawrence  County,  of  which  my  friend  Mr. 
Merritt  is  such  a  distinguished  representative,  or  you 
go  down  into  Suffolk,  it  makes  no  difference,  and  you 
will  find  that  the  American  boy  is  just  as  eager  to  merit 
a  prize  as  he  was  half  a  century  ago.  You  cannot  ob 
literate  the  true  American  sentiment  of  the  individual 
opportunity  and  individual  talent.  Socialism  has  no 
place,  and  never  will  have  any,  in  this  country.  But 
the  people  want  a  fair  show,  the  State's  work  done  well. 
They  want  the  representatives  of  the  State  to  do  their 
duty  loyally,  and  owe  allegiance  to  the  people  of  the 
State  only.  They  want  to  have  it  clearly  recognized 
that  they  are  as  much  servants  of  fidelity  as  is  com 
monplace  in  every  business  undertaking  and  in  every 
social  organization.  They  want  to  be  free  to  deal  with 
the  question  of  who  shall  be  their  representative  with 
out  suffering  political  ostracism.  They  want  what  is 
fair  and  what  is  right,  and  they  will  get  it. 

As  I  have  said,  I  am  torn  between  two  emotions  con 
stantly.  I  would  n't  for  a  moment  have  any  one  sup 
pose  that  I  look  with  a  cynical  eye  upon  the  present,  or 
that  I  regard  with  indifference  the  splendid  tone  of  our 
political  life  in  the  main  part.  For  the  most  part,  our 
State  business  is  admirably  conducted.  As  I  read  the 
other  day,  reformers  legislate  in  a  hurry,  and  a  distin 
guished  man  said  that  this  was  because  bigots  would  n't 
legislate  at  all. 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  397 

I  would  rather,  I  tell  you  in  all  truth,  be  in  your 
company  to-night  a  private  citizen  working  in  my  own 
professional  life,  than  occupy  the  position  which  you 
have  conferred  upon  me.  It  is  no  joke  to  be  governor 
of  this  State.  But  each  one  of  us  has  coming  to  him  the 
duty  of  the  day  and  hour,  and  the  test  of  every  man 
here,  in  private  life  or  in  public  life,  is  whether  he  is 
willing  to  meet  the  things  that  come  before  him  just  as 
he  may,  and  grapple  with  them.  And  I  have  confidence 
in  the  future  of  the  State,  because  I  find  throughout  the 
State  groups  of  men  who  are  eager  to  embrace  the  op 
portunity,  groups  of  men  anxious  to  discharge  the  duty 
that  lies  before  them,  and  I  have  no  doubt  as  to  the 
future  of  the  country  or  of  this  particular  section  of  it. 
Unless  you  despair  of  humanity,  you  cannot  despair  of 
the  United  States  of  America. 


MAHLON  PITNEY 

(CHANCELLOR  OF  THE  STATE  OF  NEW  JERSEY) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  CHAELES  E.  HUGHES, 
JANUARY  30,  1909 

YOU  perhaps  appreciate  how  embarrassing  is  an 
invitation  and  an  introduction  from  my  good 
friend  Mr.  Lawrence.  Any  words  of  praise  from  him 
deprive  one  of  the  desire  to  make  a  retort.  But  I  do 
indeed  gladly  say  a  few  words  on  this  occasion,  for  I 
not  only  esteem  it  a  high  honor  to  participate  with  you 
in  this  magnificent  tribute  to  the  distinguished  Gov 
ernor  of  the  Empire  State,  but  a  personal  pleasure  to 
come  and  bear  some  testimony  to  the  high  esteem  and 
regard  in  which  the  guest  of  this  evening  is  held  by 
your  neighbors  across  the  Hudson  River. 

Belonging  as  I  do  to  the  legal  profession,  for  I 
thought  I  was  a  lawyer  until  I  became  a  judge,  it  is 
natural  that  I  should  think  of  Governor  Hughes  first 
and  foremost  as  a  lawyer,  and  we  in  New  Jersey  ad 
mire  him  largely  as  such.  We  admire  him  for  the 
notable  distinction  and  prominence  that  he  at  a  com 
paratively  early  age  achieved  at  the  Bar  in  the  Empire 
State.  We  admire  him  for  his  sound  judgment ;  for  his 
thorough  grasp  of  all  the  intricacies  of  every  legal 
problem  with  which  he  has  been  confronted,  and  his 
ability  to  get  down  to  the  minutest  detail  of  the  most 

398 


MAHLON  PITNEY  399 

complicated  case  without  losing  sight  of  the  main 
points ;  for  his  high  spirit ;  for  his  integrity  of  purpose 
and  ideals.  We  think  the  Empire  State  is  highly  for 
tunate  in  having  secured  the  service  of  so  distinguished 
a  jurist  and  member  of  the  Bar  as  Charles  E.  Hughes. 

But  we  of  the  legal  profession,  you  know,  have  a 
notion  that  lawyers  are  sometimes  better  qualified  to 
act  in  a  high  representative  capacity  than  others.  They 
are  trained  to  have  a  regard  and  a  respect  for  law  and 
order,  having  an  appreciation  of  the  importance  of 
constitutional  guarantees.  All  their  lives  they  are 
familiar  with  the  complicated  affairs  of  human  life,  and 
we  think  they  naturally  do  well  in  government  office. 

And  so  I  say  that  we  in  New  Jersey,  as  Governor 
Fort  has  already  intimated  to  you,  congratulate  the 
people  of  New  York  on  being  able  to  enlist  the  services 
of  this  distinguished  member  of  the  Bar.  And  we  ad 
mire  Governor  Hughes  also  as  a  fighter.  My  friend 
across  the  table  has  reminded  you  of  some  things  that 
bring  us  to  a  sense  of  admiration  of  his  distinguished 
career,  whether  in  the  forum  or  upon  the  hustings. 
We  like  his  style  of  fighting.  Without  assuming  that 
he  is  right  on  all  occasions,  and  I  should  be  out  of  place 
in  discussing  the  matter  here  if  I  differed  from  him; 
yet  if  I  did  so  far  depart  from  the  proprieties,  it  is 
quite  possible  I  should  find  myself  obliged  to  disagree 
with  the  governor  on  points  of  policy  and  principle.  I 
have  never  yet  been  able  to  agree  in  all  things  with 
any  man. 

I  say  we  admire  Governor  Hughes  as  a  fighter.  As 
suming  that  he  is  not  always  right,  for  it  would  be  rash 
to  assume  otherwise,  he  goes  into  a  fight  when  he  be- 


400  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

lieves  he  is  right,  and  he  uses  all  honorable  means,  every 
legitimate  weapon  that  opportunity  and  experience 
bring  into  his  hand,  and  with  magnificent  skill  accom 
plishes  what  he  can  to  bring  about  what  he  believes  is 
right.  Never  in  our  time,  I  believe,  has  any  other  man 
been  so  accomplished  in  the  legitimate  use  of  that  great 
force  known  as  public  opinion.  I  know  of  none,  I 
know  of  no  man  in  our  time  who,  without  resort  to  the 
ways  of  the  demagogue,  has  been  able  to  marshal  pub 
lic  opinion  behind  him  with  such  distinguished  success 
as  Governor  Hughes.  Any  man  who  is  clever  and  who 
is  in  public  life  can  with  a  little  diligence  form  a  pretty 
good  estimate  of  what  is  public  opinion,  and,  after 
second  thought  upon  any  matter,  what  is  the  current 
of  opinion;  but  it  requires  more  than  a  clever  man  to 
foresee  with  a  clear  vision,  months  ahead  of  the  event, 
what  is  to  be  the  second  thought  of  public  opinion  after 
the  discussion  that  shall  intervene  in  the  meantime. 

I  am  not,  I  confess,  either  an  advocate  or  an  admirer 
of  what  is  commonly  called  "initiative  and  referen 
dum,"  but  I  am  a  believer  in  the  broad  plans  of  the 
founders  of  the  government,  which  intended  that  the 
Chief  Executive  of  the  State  or  of  the  Nation  was  to 
be  charged  with  the  duty  of  recommending  to  the  law- 
making  body  of  the  people  such  changes  in  the  law  as 
he  in  his  judgment  under  a  sense  of  duty  should  deem 
proper.  I  believe  in  that  initiative,  and  I  believe  in 
that  kind  of  referendum.  Governor  Hughes  believed 
it  was  his  duty  to  make  a  recommendation  as  the  result 
of  study  and  experience,  and  go  before  the  legislature 
with  it,  relying  upon  the  influence  of  legitimate  and 
instructed  public  opinion. 


MAHLON  PITNEY  401 

Now,  I  don't  know  that  what  I  intended  to  say  would 
be  complete  unless  I  make  some  part  of  it  in  form  that  is 
understandable  in  financial  New  York.  As  Governor 
Fort  has  said,  we  often  think  of  New  York,  and  espe 
cially  of  Wall  Street,  as  spending  much  of  its  time  in 
financing  New  Jersey  corporations.  We  have  a  corpo 
ration  law  in  our  State,  and  I  might  mention  what  we 
think  Wall  Street  sometimes  forgets,  that  that  law 
contemplates  that  every  dollar's  worth  of  corporate 
stock  that  will  be  issued  shall  have  behind  it  an  equiv 
alent  in  value,  in  money  or  money's  worth,  and  every 
share  of  stock  issued  for  property  purchased  shall  have 
behind  it  equally  solid  value.  Now,  if  my  friend  across 
the  table,  who  is  somewhat  of  a  light  among  the  cor 
poration  lawyers  in  New  York,  will  devise  some  scheme 
that  will  get  an  underwriting  in  Wall  Street,  and  in 
corporate  the  brain,  the  heart,  and  the  high  purpose 
and  the  mental  equipment  of  Charles  E,  Hughes,  di 
vided  into  a  sufficient  number  of  shares  so  that  it  can  be 
freely  distributed  to  each  of  us,  you  may  capitalize  it  at 
what  figure  you  please,  and  the  Bar  of  New  Jersey  will 
strenuously  maintain  that  the  stock  is  backed  by  assets 
of  more  than  par  value. 


FRANK  E.  LAWRENCE 

(PRESIDENT  OF  THE  CLUB) 

"LAST  WOBDS  IN  THE  OLD  HOUSE," 
JANUAEY  30,  1909 

FT!  HE  last  assemblage  in  the  house  556-558  Fifth 
JL  Avenue  took  place  on  the  30th  of  January,  1909, 
at  a  dinner  in  honor  of  the  Governor  of  the  State  of 
New  York. 

At  the  close  of  the  speaking,  "Auld  Lang  Syne"  was 
sung  by  all  present,  and  then  President  Lawrence  said : 

' '  The  time  has  come  to  say  the  final  word.  It  is  diffi 
cult  to  realize  that  never  again  shall  I  look  about  these 
old  rooms,  upon  this  kindly,  sympathetic  gathering.  I 
wish  we  had  not  to  go.  I  wish  it  could  all  be  undone. 
But  life  in  New  York  is  inexorable,  and,  like  poor  Jo  in 
'Bleak  House,'  we  must  'move  on.' 

"Let  the  last  words  spoken  here  be  those  with  which 
it  was  my  privilege  to  terminate  our  last  gathering  in 
the  old  house,  sixteen  years  ago : 

'We  may  build  more  splendid  habitations, 
Fill  our  rooms  with  paintings  and  with  sculptures, 
But  we  cannot 
Buy  with  gold  the  old  associations/ 

( '  Gentlemen,  good  night. ' ' 

402 


FEANK  E.  LAWEENCE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  ANDEEW  CAENEGIE, 
MAECH  17,  1909 

ENTLEMEN  of  the  Lotos  Club :  I  welcome  you  to 
VJ  your  new  home.  Amid  these  surroundings  you 
are  henceforth  to  pursue  the  simple  life.  Claude  Mel- 
notte,  in  Bulwer's  melodrama,  depicted  to  his  beloved  a 
dwelling  of  the  most  wonderful  splendor,  and  then  con 
ducted  her  to  the  hut  of  a  peasant.  The  Building  Com 
mittee  of  this  club,  after  causing  us  to  expect  a  house  of 
great  simplicity,  have  beguiled  us  to  this  Florentine 
palace. 

This  is  the  fourth  home  of  the  club,  which  has  now 
entered  its  fortieth  year.  It  had  outgrown  the  old 
house,  and  needed  such  a  home  as  this;  and  to-night 
even  this  large  hall  is  taxed  beyond  its  capacity,  though 
not  often  may  we  expect  such  a  great  outpouring  of  the 
members  as  is  now  assembled  to  greet  Mr.  Carnegie. 

The  transition  from  the  old  house  has  not  been  with 
out  its  difficulties.  "When  the  club  had  sold  its  recent 
home,  but  had  not  been  paid  for  it ;  when  it  had  bought 
the  land  upon  which  this  house  stands,  and  had  torn 
down  the  building  which  formerly  stood  here,  the  panic 
of  1907  occurred,  and  with  payment  for  its  property 
deferred,  and  its  resources  indefinitely  tied  up,  the 
predicament  was,  to  say  the  least,  a  disagreeable  one, 
for  the  club  could  go  neither  forward  nor  back. 

403 


404  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

The  situation  being  made  known  to  Mr.  Carnegie,  he, 
without  a  moment's  hesitation,  said  that  the  work 
should  not  be  delayed,  and  advanced  the  means  to  pro 
ceed  with  this  building ;  and  this  was  done  so  kindly,  so 
modestly,  and  so  graciously,  as  to  leave  your  president, 
at  the  end  of  a  most  delightful  conversation,  with  a 
confused  feeling  that,  somehow  or  other,  an  obligation 
had  been  conferred  upon  Mr.  Carnegie. 

One  other  thing  he  did.  He  predicted  the  course  of 
affairs  so  unerringly  that  by  following  the  advice  he 
gave  your  committee  was  enabled  to  go  into  the  market 
at  just  the  right  moment,  and  to  make  its  contracts  on 
terms  the  most  advantageous ;  so  that  this  house,  erected 
with  the  resources  which  he  so  generously  advanced, 
was  constructed  for  many  thousands  of  dollars  less  than 
would  have  been  possible  either  a  year  earlier  or  six 
months  later. 

Like  the  rest  of  the  world,  we  had  long  known  of  his 
great  kindliness  of  heart,  but  it  was  a  delight  to  find 
him  so  warmly  attached  to  the  Lotos  Club,  of  which, 
for  the  past  sixteen  years,  he  has  been  an  active  and 
interested  member. 

No  words  spoken  here  would  be  adequate  in  praise  of 
Andrew  Carnegie.  His  benefactions  have  been  innum 
erable.  Boundless  as  has  been  his  success,  how  infinitely 
greater  has  been  his  philanthropy!  Beside  the  story 
of  his  career,  the  tales  of  "The  Arabian  Nights "  seem 
puny  and  prosaic.  What  other  life  can  we  recall, 
crowded  so  close  with  vast  achievements,  all  in  the  line 
of  promoting  peace,  advancing  industry,  literature,  and 
the  arts,  and  contributing,  through  countless  channels, 
to  the  welfare  of  mankind  ? 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  405 

And  yet  I  like  best  to  think  of  Mr.  Carnegie  as  one 
of  ourselves;  as  a  man  filled  with,  the  spirit  of  kindli 
ness,  of  comradeship,  the  spirit  which  bubbles  over  so 
abundantly  in  the  earliest  of  his  published  books,  which 
I  first  read  twenty-five  years  ago.  In  the  first  ten  pages 
of  that  delightful  volume,  there  is  philosophy  enough  to 
furnish  us  all  with  food  for  thought,  and  on  every  page 
there  is  the  touch  of  nature  which  makes  him  kin  to  the 
spirit  of  this  club,  and  it  must  have  been  that  spirit 
which  first  attracted  him  to  us. 

It  is  not  the  men  here,  but  the  purposes  of  this  club, 
which  have  appealed  to  Mr.  Carnegie.  For  this  is  no 
mere  place  of  convivial  assembly.  Here  the  artist,  the 
writer,  the  journalist,  and  the  professional  man  meet 
upon  common  ground,  and  to  no  unworthy  purpose. 
The  club  aspires  to  be  a  home  of  art  and  literature ;  to 
welcome  the  distinguished  stranger  to  our  shores,  and  to 
extend  to  genius  a  hearty  recognition,  in  whatever  form 
it  may  have  found  expression.  These  purposes  it  has 
tried  to  pursue  in  the  past.  Amid  these  larger  sur 
roundings,  our  aim  should  be  to  pursue  them  on  a 
broader  and  higher  plane. 

What  a  happy  omen  that  our  first  assemblage  about 
these  tables  in  this  new  house  should  be  in  honor  of  this 
illustrious  patron  of  arts  and  letters,  of  whose  encour 
agement  and  assistance  the  club  now  makes  grateful 
acknowledgment ;  to  whom  the  world  owes  so  much ;  to 
whom  humanity  owes  so  much;  our  friend  and  fellow- 
member,  to  whom  I  ask  you  now  to  rise  and  join  with 
me  in  wishing  long  life  and  every  happiness— Mr.  An 
drew  Carnegie. 


ANDKEW  CAKNEGIE 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  MAECH  17,  1909 

THE  way  of  the  philanthropist  is,  indeed,  hard. 
Now,  what  if  you  come  here  and  sit  here,  as  I  sat 
just  now,  and  hear  one  of  the  most  eloquent  of  presid 
ing  officers  let  loose  to  descant  upon  your  virtues ! 

I  think  that  in  the  trial  of  endurance  the  balance  is 
on  my  side.  You  have  told  the  members,  Mr.  President, 
of  some  slight  service  I  was  able  to  render  the  Club 
in  enabling  it  to  secure  this  palatial  home.  He  did  not 
urge  me  to  do  anything.  I  led  him  to  tell  me  of  a  situa 
tion  that  had  arisen  and  I  simply  said  what  he  says  I 
said,  and  that  is  all  I  have  done. 

But  you  know  this  is  the  home  of  art,  and  that  pic 
ture  he  drew  of  your  fellow-member  is  certainly  a  high 
piece  of  true  and  capable  art— it  bears  so  little  resem 
blance  to  the  original.  I  looked  up  a  book  the  other 
day  upon  clubs,  and  I  found  that  a  British  author 
stated  that  there  were  now  clubs  after  the  English 
model  in  New  York.  And  among  those  in  America 
comes  first,  so  he  said— I  am  not  misrepresenting— the 
Lotos,  and  then  follow,  at  a  respectable  distance,  the 
Century  and  the  Union  League.  I  believe  that  the  im 
pression  you  have  spread  in  England  is,  as  a  distin 
guished  financier  said  to  me  when  he  heard  about  the 

406 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  407 

Lotos  Club,  "Oh,  that  's  where  all  the  clever  fellows 
are/'  Well,  being  one  of  those  who  had  got  there,  I 
modestly  was  silent. 

Now,  you  all  remember,  you  have  read  at  all  events, 
that  the  Church  of  Britain  would  n't  consecrate  a 
bishop  in  the  United  States,  until  we  got  an  old  Scotch 
man;  and  he  said  he  would  n't  care  a  bit  what  the 
government  said,  if  the  man  was  right  he  would  con 
secrate  him,  and  by  that  means  this  great  country  has 
all  the  blessings  of  ordination,  coordination,  and  foreor- 
dination  and  all  the  others. 

I  have  thought  of  a  great  many  things  this  evening, 
as  when,  for  instance,  I  saw  the  father  of  golf  sitting 
there.  Now  we  have  here  the  game  of  golf  brought 
from  Scotland,  and  we  hear  a  great  deal  in  these  days 
about  it;  there  were  two  Scotch  lads  in  Dunfermline, 
one  of  whom  brought  the  first  golf  sticks  to  America 
and  began  to  play  at  Yonkers.  And  there  sits  the 
president  of  the  first  Golf  Club  of  America.  Talk  about 
distinguished  citizens  of  Dunfermline,  of  Scotland,  tell 
me  what  two  men  can  be  more  distinguished  than  these 
from  Dunfermline;  and  there  is  a  third  Dunfermline 
member  who  gets  the  highest  number  of  strokes  in  every 
handicap,  who  shall  be  nameless. 

I  always  try  to  make  the  best  bargain  possible;  and 
then  I  don't  mention  the  odds  unless  called  upon.  But 
now,  I  read  here  upon  your  beautiful  menu  that  it  is 
astonishing  how  much  you  can  make  out  of  a  Scotch 
man  if  he  is  caught  young.  There  is  another  side  to 
that  question  which  occurs  to  me.  How  much  can  a 
Scotchman  make  out  of  you  if  he  begins  when  he  's 


408  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

young?  Now,  gentlemen,  that  is  well  worthy  of  con 
sideration. 

Now  turning  to  the  modern  club— the  name  comes 
from  Scotland.  In  1740 — I  have  read  this  all  up  and  I 
am  just  primed  now— that  was  the  first  time  it  ever 
received  the  name  of  club,  from  the  club,  or  clump,  of 
trees.  The  modern  club  dates  from  that  time  in  Scot 
land,  and  it  took  there;  they  tell  of  an  old  gentleman 
who  when  asked  where  he  was  going,  replied,  * '  Oh,  doun 
tae  the  club. "  ll Wha '  f or? "  "Oh,  just  to  contradict 
a  wee." 

The  real  use  of  clubs  is  that  men  may  get  to  know 
each  other,  and  the  term,  a  clubbable  man,  takes  on  a 
proud  significance.  We  are  all  good-fellows,  and,  oh, 
how  true  it  is  that  we  only  hate  or  despise  those  that  we 
don't  know!  There  is  something  about  it,  bright  men 
contributing  all  kinds  of  things,  they  join  the  same  club, 
and  it  is  astonishing  how  one  man  begins  to  think 
"Why,  Lawrence  is  n't  such  a  bad  fellow,  after  all." 
If  you  just  get  to  know  your  enemies,  why  they  are  all 
right.  Take  the  case  of  a  man  who  joins  this  club ;  he 
discovers  a  universal  feeling,  that  you  would  like  to 
know  and  welcome  them  all,  satisfied  that  if  you  did 
know  those  that  you  don't  meet  with,  you  would  be 
surprised,  gratified  and  benefited  in  a  hundred  ways 
by  knowing  those  whom  you  set  wholly  apart  as  per 
haps  not  worth  the  knowing.  That  is  the  great  benefit 
of  a  club,  and  that  is  what  makes  the  Lotos  Club  the 
delightful  place  that  it  is. 

It  is  a  great  thing  in  this  country  of  ours.  It  is  a 
saving  grace  for  the  national  character  in  this  struggle 


ANDREW  CARNEGIE  409 

for  wealth  that  we  have  clubs  like  the  Lotos,  where  men 
come  together  and  are  touched  by  finer  things,  and  get 
to  know  that  among  all  the  blessings  of  life  are  few 
that  rank  above  that  of  good  fellowship. 

I  recognize,  of  course,  that  what  the  president  has  to 
say  about  the  guest  of  the  evening  has  to  be  taken  in  a 
Pickwickian  sense,  and  know  that  his  panegyric  won't 
do  me  any  harm.  I  could  n't  believe  a  word  of  it.  I 
think  it  is  like  a  story  that  is  told  of  dear  old  Mr. 
Dodge  and  Dean  Richmond.  Dodge  told  Richmond 
that  he  must  quit  swearing,  or  must  break  off  with  him, 
that  he  could  n't  stand  it.  Richmond  remonstrated: 
' '  Oh,  well,  Dodge,  I  swear  a  little,  and  you  pray  a  good 
deal ;  but,  oh,  Lord,  neither  of  us  means  anything  by  it. ' ' 

We  must  remember,  gentlemen,  in  our  association 
with  each  other,  that  if  any  little  jarring  should  come, 
and  any  little  disappointments,  we  must  be  generous  and 
forgive  and  forget,  and,  above  all  things,  contribute  to 
the  blessings  of  mankind,  and  never  for  a  moment  allow 
yourselves  to  believe  that  your  fellow-member  meant 
anything  that  could  jar  upon  your  feelings  or  hurt  you 
in  any  way  whatever.  We  are  all  friends  here,  and  T 
close  with  that  quotation  from  "Hamlet"  that  I  hope 
you  will  find  to  be  true  all  your  life :  "I  think  myself  in 
nothing  else  so  happy  as  in  a  soul  remembering  my  dear 
friends. ' '  I  thank  you,  gentlemen. 


ST.  CLAIE  McKELWAY 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  ANDEEW  CAENEGIE, 
MAECH  17,  1909 

ON  behalf  of  the  newspaper  men  here  present,  I  have 
been  requested  to  speak  for  that  calling.  I  do  so 
with  great  pleasure.  To-day  was  St.  Patrick's  day. 
This,  in  the  Lotos  Club,  is  Andrew  Carnegie's  night. 
St.  Patrick  and  Mr.  Carnegie  are  Scotchmen  both.  They 
have  been  wanderers  both.  St.  Patrick,  who  earned  the 
credit  of  running  away,  was  born  in  Scotland,  but 
did  n't  stay  there  very  long.  He  was  involuntarily 
deported.  Mr.  Carnegie  left  Scotland  voluntarily,  and 
has  returned  to  it  periodically.  St.  Patrick,  under  com 
pulsion,  went  to  Ireland.  There  he  was  in  involuntary 
service,  and  from  there  he  escaped  to  France.  In 
France  he  attained  education,  religion,  and  ordination, 
and  then  he  returned  to  Ireland  to  make  it  forever  his 
own.  He  established  religion  there.  He  established 
only  one  religion  there.  The  civilized  world  was  then 
one  in  religion.  It  became  divided  owing  to  a  dispute 
between  men  as  to  which  should  have  a  monopoly  of  the 
conduct  of  sinners  into  one  place  and  saints  into  an 
other.  As  I  was  named,  and  have  always  been  named, 
and  have  always  lived  as  among  the  saints,  I  shall  pass 
no  criticism  upon  that  dispute  as  to  the  province  of 
theological  thought. 

410 


ST.  GLAIR  McKELWAY  411 

Something  has  been  said  about  Mr.  Carnegie  as  a 
Scotchman.  Mr.  Carnegie  is  an  American.  He  is  in 
eligible  only  to  the  Presidency  or  Vice-Presidency  of 
the  United  States,  and  he  wants  neither.  He  is  a  valu 
able  and  a  valued  American,  a  valued  and  valuable  citi 
zen  of  a  polyglot  republic.  Valuable  because  he  has  done 
much  for  it ;  and  he  has  done  much  for  it  because  it  has 
done  much  for  him.  Valued  because  he  has,  almost 
alone  among  magnates,  insisted  that  he  was  taxed  too 
low  and  too  little,  and  should  be  rated  at  the  full  value 
of  the  possessions  upon  which  he  owed  a  duty  to  his  city 
and  his  country.  In  this,  I  think,  he  was  unique.  The 
unusual  has  been  his  preference  or  his  foible.  Only  the 
lack  of  resources,  however,  has  prevented  some  of  us 
from  insisting  upon  being  taxed— that  is,  up  to  the  full 
value  of  Mr.  Carnegie 's  possessions. 

Now  this  is  to  be  borne  in  mind.  None  of  us  are 
sorry,  as  none  of  us  can  be  surprised,  that  several  of  Mr. 
Carnegie's  benefactions  have  been  criticized  by  those 
who  cannot  make  them,  but  have  no  scruple  about  en 
joying  them;  for  there  will  never  be  a  unanimity  of 
estimate  about  Andrew  Carnegie  as  long  as  he  is  alive, 
and  may  he  live  long !  And  after  he  has  ceased  to  live, 
time  enough  will  pass  before  he  is  crystallized  into  a 
sage,  and  may  his  adjournment  into  shadowland  be 
indefinitely  postponed !  This  carries  with  it  a  certainty 
of  criticism,  and  we  are  ready  to  stand  as  a  unit  for  the 
cause  of  such  criticism  as  long  as  he  has  cause,  and  to 
endure  with  him,  as  he  will  with  us,  the  result  of  the 
consequences  of  being  alive.  Criticism  either  signifies 
what  people  think  or  what  they  think  they  think.  Those 
who  only  think  they  think  are  those  men  whose  thinking 


412  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

is  done  for  them  by  us  newspaper  folks.  I  would  do 
nothing  to  discourage  those  who  think  they  think ;  some 
of  them  let  me  do  their  thinking  for  them. 

No,  Mr.  Carnegie  is  not  only  a  liberal  and  a  shrewd 
factor  of  liberality  in  others,  but  he  is  more  than  a 
giver,  more  than  an  instigator  of  giving,  he  is  a  topic 
and  the  cause  in  others  of  the  discussion  of  himself.  I 
am  not  eulogizing  him.  I  am  trying  to  denote  him. 
The  man  who  makes  three  occasions  for  editorial  com 
ment  where  none  existed  before  is  a  boon,  and  a  boon  is 
greater  than  a  benefactor. 


EICHAED  WATSON  GILDER 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  ANDEEW  CAENEGIE, 
MAECH  17,  1909 

IN  giving  me  the  subject  of  Andrew  Carnegie,  you 
have  given  me  a  very  rich  subject.  If  the  quality 
of  riches  attached  to  Mr.  Carnegie 's  name  was  only 
such  as  your  kind  applause  would  indicate,  it  would  be 
a  comparatively  uninteresting  subject  to  me.  Mr.  Car 
negie  is  not  only  a  boon  as  a  subject  of  editorial  dis 
cussion,  but  he  has  his  value  as  a  contributor,  and 
nobody  appreciates  that  more  than  the  editor  of  a  cer 
tain  magazine.  Mr.  Carnegie  has  a  fixed  price  as  a 
contributor,  a  fixed  price  per  word.  I  shall  not  tell  you 
what  it  is.  He  is  always  paid.  "What  finally  becomes 
of  the  proceeds  of  the  check  with  which  he  is  paid  is  a 
matter  of  finance  you  will  not  ask  me  to  disclose  on  this 
occasion. 

Mr.  Carnegie  interests  me  not  so  much  as  a  man  of 
incomputable  wealth,  but  as  a  man  living  one  of  the 
richest  lives  I  have  ever  known.  I  have  little  doubt 
that  he  would  have  been  a  success  in  any  line  he  might 
have  taken  up,  because  in  him  we  have,  I  think,  one  of 
the  most  interesting  and  powerful  individualities  of 
our  day.  He  has  the  power  of  literary  expression  that 
is  always  interesting  to  me. 

My  mind  goes  back  to  the  time  when  I  was  a  good 

413 


414  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

deal  interested  in  the  subject  of  finance,  and  I  remem 
ber  saying  to  him,  standing  in  front  of  his  fireplace  and 
asking  him,  if  it  was  n't  an  undue  accumulation  of 
funds  at  that  time  which  troubled  him.  I  also  know 
another  thing :  I  have  sat  here  this  evening,  thinking  of 
a  time  when  Mr.  Carnegie  had  to  borrow  money,  and  I 
was  wondering  whether  it  would  be  competent  for  me, 
here  and  now,  to  attempt  to  collect  twenty-five  cents  I 
lent  him  on  a  recent  occasion. 

Mr.  Carnegie  spoke  of  friendship  and  of  good  fellow 
ship.  I  speak  of  his  life  as  a  rich  life.  If  you  will  think 
for  a  moment,  you  will  recall  that  Mr.  Carnegie  has 
been  brought,  during  the  last  twenty  years,  into  inti 
mate  association  with  some  of  the  ablest  and  noblest 
men  in  the  two  great  countries  of  America  and  Great 
Britain,  not  merely  of  Scotland;  and  in  America  I  in 
clude  Canada.  The  foremost  men  of  these  two  great 
countries  have  been  administering  his  wonderful  bene 
factions.  Now,  I  know  these  men  to  be  among  the 
greatest  and  noblest  characters  and  most  cultivated 
men  living  to-day.  And  I  know  that  every  one  of  them 
prizes  as  one  of  his  dearest  possessions  the  friendship  of 
Andrew  Carnegie. 


SAMUEL  L.  CLEMENS 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  ANDEEW  CAENEGIE, 
MAECH  17,  1909 

I  AM  glad  that  at  last  a  man  has  been  found  with 
justice  enough  in  his  heart  to  pay  me  the  compliment 
which  I  have  so  long  deserved,  and  which  has  been 
denied  me  by  so  many  generations  of  supposedly  intel 
ligent  human  beings.  Ranking  me  with  the  saints! 
There  is  nothing  which  pleases  me  more  than  that,  be 
cause  there  is  nothing  left  which  I  have  deserved  more 
than  just  that.  I  have  ranked  myself  with  St.  Andrew 
there  for  several  years,  and  I  really  think  that  this 
should  have  been  a  dinner  to  the  two  of  us,  as  St.  An 
drew  was  born  on  the  same  day  in  the  same  year  as  I 
was.  If  St.  Andrew  had  been  born  as  early  as  he  was 
on  the  30th  of  November,  I  should  stand  now  about 
where  he  stands.  He  got  in  a  little  ahead  of  me. 

St.  Clair  there  is  a  saint,  but  a  minor  sort  of  saint. 
He  is  a  Missourian.  So  am  I.  Look  at  St.  Clair  McKel- 
way!  You  would  n't  think  he  came  from  a  State  like 
that,  he  looks  so  proud  and  respectable.  In  its  coat  of 
arms  is  a  barrel-head  and  two  Missourians,  one  on  each 
side  of  it,  leaning  there  together,  with  the  motto,  a  mis 
leading  motto  altogether,  which  says,  "  United  we  stand, 
divided  we  fall." 

Now  it  is  an  interesting  thing,  St.  Andrew  here  is 
415 


416  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

here  as  a  special  guest,  and  he  has  heard  himself  compli 
mented,  and  complimented,  and  complimented.  You 
know,  it  is  anybody's  experience  who  has  had  any  large 
experience  in  being  the  chief  guest  at  a  banquet,  and 
you  must  know  how  entirely  undeserved  that  entire  pro 
ceeding  is,  for  the  reason  that  the  chairman  begins  by 
filling  him  up  with  compliments,  and  while  they  are 
well  done,  they  are  not  quite  high  enough  to  meet  the 
demand. 

Now,  this  man  has  suffered  this  evening  from  hearing 
compliments  poured  out  on  him,  apparently  with  lavish- 
ness,  but  he  knows  deep  down  in  his  heart  that  if  he 
could  overcome  his  diffidence  he  could  improve  those 
compliments.  But  he  tries  to  dissemble,  as  our  chief 
guest  always  does— look  at  the  expression  he  has  got  on 
now !  And  the  man  always  thinks  he  is  doing  it  well ! 
Anybody  who  knows,  knows  that  it  is  a  pretty  awkward 
performance,  that  diffidence  that  he  is  working  on  his 
countenance  does  n  't  deceive  anybody ;  but  it  is  always 
interesting  to  see  what  people  will  find  to  say  about  a 
man.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  what  Carnegie  has  done,  for 
I  would  have  done  it  myself,  if  I  had  had  to. 

I  don't  know  just  what  Mr.  Lawrence  told  you  about 
how  Mr.  Carnegie  came  to  the  rescue  of  this  club  when  it 
was  likely  to  get  into  trouble,  for  I  came  in  late ;  but  I 
judge  from  remarks  that  followed  that  he  did  tell  you 
about  that,  and  that  was  a  fine  thing  to  do.  And  they 
tell  me  that  it  was  at  a  banquet  given  by  the  Lotos  Club 
to  me;  it  was  at  that  banquet  that  Mr.  Carnegie  had 
that  inspiration.  But,  of  course,  he  gets  the  entire 
credit !  It  never  occurs  to  anybody  that  perhaps  I  fur 
nished  that  inspiration.  I  don't  say  I  did.  I  live  a 


SAMUEL  L.   CLEMENS  417 

modest  life,  and  people  can  see  that  by  my  features ;  I 
don 't  want  to  advertise  the  way  others  do. 

"Why,  the  first  thing  that  Mr.  Carnegie  starts  out  to 
tell  you  is  what  Scotland  has  contributed  to  this  world. 
It  has  contributed  everybody  that  has  been  of  any  value 
to  the  United  States.  I  am  not  denying  it.  I  am  saying 
that  it  is  momentous,  that  's  all.  I  don't  know  that 
Andrew  Carnegie  and  Mr.  Tower  told  it,  but  they  all 
come  from  Dunfermline.  What  would  have  happened 
if  all  Scotland  had  turned  out  ? 

I  understand  that  Mr.  Carnegie  claims  that  Columbus 
was  born  in  Dunfermline,  and  he  discovered  the  coun 
try,  and  two  or  three  other  men  established  religion, 
where  they  did  n't  have  any;  and  from  this  fact  they 
go  on  distributing  Dunfermline  people  all  over  this 
country,  and  acquiring  advantages  thereby.  Mr.  Tower 
moved  back  and  called  his  hand  one  or  two  points  bet 
ter.  Well,  I  don't  know  how  far  Tower  did  go,  but  he 
furnished  us  a  saint  out  of  Scotland  that  I  always 
thought  was  from  Ireland.  That  is  not  the  right  thing 
to  do  on  St.  Patrick's  Day.  St.  Patrick  was  well 
enough,  not  St.  Andrew's  equal,  but  well  enough.  I 
don't  think  Mr.  Tower  ought  to  back  him  up  at  this 
time  and  go  on  distributing  Scotchmen  out  of  Dun 
fermline. 

St.  Clair  McKelway  followed  up  the  compliment  with 
a  veritable  compliment  of  compliments,  away  on  top  of 
anything  that  these  men  have  been  able  to  pay  Mr.  Car 
negie  when  they  were  trying  as  largely  as  they  could. 
Mr.  McKelway  makes  a  compliment  away  beyond  all 
others,  beyond  which  nobody  can  go,  when  he  says  that 
' '  there  is  a  man  who  wants  to  pay  more  taxes  than  are 


418  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

charged  to  him. ' '  I  have  never  listened  to  such  extrava 
gance  of  compliment,  and  I  have  never  seen  a  case 
when  it  was  so  well  deserved.  Well,  McKelway  had  to 
come  in  and  pay  his  compliment,  and  McKelway  did  it 
very  well,  and  so  did  Gilder— very  well  for  a  poet.  And 
he  took  the  opportunity  to  advertise  his  magazine,  and 
that  it  has  the  distinction  of  having  Mr.  Carnegie  as  a 
contributor ;  but,  worse  than  that,  he  said  that  it  pays 
Mr.  Carnegie,  otherwise  you  might  feel  that  his  maga 
zine  was  getting  that  literature  for  nothing.  Now,  he 
gets  that  into  the  Associated  Press  in  the  morning,  and 
his  magazine  will  fly  pretty  high  and  mighty,  and  the 
people  will  hear  of  Mr.  Carnegie ;  and,  the  next  thing, 
Gilder  will  be  trying  to  hire  me ! 

I  have  gone  on  through  this  world  now  nearly  sev 
enty-four  years,  and  all  through  it  I  have  preserved— 
all  that  I  have  preserved  is  my  diffidence,  my  chief  vir 
tue,  a  moderate  modesty  and  diffidence.  I  am  getting 
pretty  old  now,  likely  to  run  out,  and  can't  work;  but  I 
am  going  to  sit  down,  and  before  I  sit  down  I  do  want 
to  wish  for  Mr.  Carnegie  long  life  and  continued  pros 
perity,  and  eventually  a  measure  of  respectability. 


HENEY  S.  PEITCHETT 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  ANDEEW  CAENEGIE, 
MAECH  17,  1909 

THIS  is  one  of  the  very  few  occasions  on  which  I 
have  been  able  to  be  proud  of  the  fact  that  I  was 
born  in  Missouri.  I  happened  to  have  the  great  mis 
fortune  to  be  born  in  the  county  adjacent  to  that  in 
which  our  friend  Samuel  L.  Clemens  was  born,  and  all 
my  life  long  I  have  tried  to  live  down  the  reputation 
for  truthfulness  which  that  unfortunate  accident  of 
birth  brought  upon  me  at  an  early  date.  It  is  only  the 
fact  that  I  served  an  apprenticeship  in  Boston  which 
has  served  at  this  late  day  to  wipe  out,  to  some  extent 
at  least,  the  misfortune  of  my  untimely  birth. 

It  is  these  occasions  that  indicate  our  feeling  for  a 
man,  that  we  are  glad  that  he  is  alive.  We  have  been 
doing  this  on  a  large  scale.  We  began  with  President 
Roosevelt  when  he  gave  up  his  great  office.  The  en 
comiums  which  came  to  him  had  occasionally  a  few 
pricks  in  them.  Then  President  Eliot  gave  up  his 
great  office.  Now  the  distinguished  guest  of  the  evening 
has  not  completely  resigned  his  business,  for  he  con 
tinues  to  do  business  at  the  old  stand,  and  it  is  therefore 
as  a  great  personal  compliment  that  we  welcome  him 
as  one  right  good  man  and  good-fellow. 

Just  what  sort  of  crown  posterity  reserves  for  those 

419 


420  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

who  are  right  it  is  hardly  possible  for  us  to  say,  but  I 
was  interested  a  few  days  ago  in  a  story  which  a  college 
president  told  me.  He  dreamed  he  died  and  went  to 
heaven,  being  a  college  president,  and  he  rapped  mildly 
at  the  door.  The  guardian  inquired  what  his  business 
had  been,  and  he  said  he  was  a  college  president.  In 
answer  to  a  question  as  to  how  long  he  had  been  a  col 
lege  president  he  said,  '  *  Twenty-five  years. ' '  The  door 
was  thrown  open  with  the  remark,  "Any  man  who  has 
been  a  college  president  for  twenty-five  years  has  in 
stant  admission  here.  Have  a  seat  inside  for  a  minute, 
while  I  take  care  of  a  gentleman  from  New  York. '  '  The 
president  sat  there,  and  soon  the  New  York  gentleman 
came  along,  and  he  talked  to  the  guardian  in  a  very 
quick,  energetic  manner,  and  also  had  a  short  con 
versation  with  St.  Peter.  He  was  instantly  admitted, 
and  after  remaining  inside  for  ten  minutes  he  came 
out,  and  seemed  disturbed.  Then  the  college  president 
went  inside  and  sat  down  to  be  measured  for  a  halo, 
and  he  asked,  "Who  was  that  gentleman  that  just  came 
in?"  "Oh,"  was  the  answer,  "that  was  Mr.  Andrew 
Carnegie,  from  New  York."  "Why,  does  he  come 
here  ? "  "  Oh,  yes,  it  is  just  the  place  for  Mr.  Carnegie ; 
he  is  the  kind  of  a  man  we  like  to  get  up  here." 
"Well,"  persisted  the  college  president,  "why  did  he 
go  out?"  "Well,"  was  the  response,  "it  was  like  this. 
Mr.  Carnegie  came  in  in  a  very  businesslike  way.  He 
wanted  to  get  down  to  business  at  once.  He  wanted  a 
first-class,  A-number-one  halo,  fine  gold,  with  all  the 
modern  fittings,  and  he  'd  like  to  get  into  the  game  as 
quickly  as  possible.  One  of  the  angels  *  halos  was 
brought  in,  but  it  was  just  a  half  halo.  And  we  said 


HENRY  S.  PRITCHETT  421 

to  him,  'Mr.  Carnegie,  we  have  been  observing  the 
method  in  which  you  deal  with  college  presidents,  and 
think  it  is  an  extremely  good  plan ;  and  we  are  going  to 
fit  you  out  here  with  half  a  halo,  and  expect  you  to 
rustle  and  get  the  other  half  yourself.'  " 

Your  distinguished  guest  said  that  the  life  of  a  phi 
lanthropist  was  a  hard  one.  I  suppose  that  the  reason 
is  that  very  few  of  us  ever  really  stop  to  think  what  it 
means  to  be  the  master  of  one  of  these  great  sums  of 
money.  I  say  master,  because  no  man  ever  owns  five 
hundred  million  dollars,  or  three  hundred,  or  two  hun 
dred.  A  man  owns  that  which  he  can  use  for  his  own 
support,  comfort,  and  pleasure,  and  charities— that  is, 
charities  in  which  he  can  give  himself;  everything 
above  that  he  simply  controls  for  a  long  or  a  short  time. 
These  great  sums  of  money  are  merely  a  sort  of  reser 
voir  of  power  that  may  be  let  loose,  or  not.  Now,  no 
responsibilities  laid  on  any  man  in  our  social  order  are 
so  heavy  as  are  the  responsibilities  laid  on  that  person 
who  has  by  accident,  or  descent,  or  industry,  or  by  his 
own  wise  planning  come  into  the  responsibility  of  one 
of  these  great  reservoirs  of  monetary  power.  A  ruler 
may  resign,  a  president  may  serve  his  term  and  pass 
on,  but  a  man  with  this  responsibility  must  inevitably 
in  the  end  account  to  his  fellow-men.  He  may  give  it 
in  ways  that  are  bad,  and  posterity  will  call  him 
anathema.  He  may  give  it  in  ways  that  are  unwise,  and 
they  will  call  him  a  fool.  But  it  is  the  fact  that  the 
man  who  comes  into  this  responsibility  must  give  an 
accounting  of  it  sooner  or  later,  whether  that  account 
ing  comes  in  his  own  generation  or  the  generation 
which  follows. 


422  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

I,  for  my  part,  would  not  undertake  to  answer  that 
question  which  naturally  arises:  Can  a  man  wisely 
manage  so  much  power?  Is  it,  on  the  whole,  good  for 
humanity  that  three  hundred  millions,  or  four  hundred 
or  five  hundred  millions  of  dollars  shall  come  into  the 
management  and  control  of  one  man  ?  That  is  the  ques 
tion  which  society  asks  to-day  practically  of  the  men 
who  have  this  responsibility.  That  is  the  question 
which  sooner  or  later  each  of  them  must  work  out.  Just 
what  the  result  will  be  in  any  distinct  case  I  don't 
undertake  to  say.  I  know  that  so  far  as  I  am  per 
sonally  concerned,  and  speaking  with  reference  to  Mr. 
Carnegie,  I  cannot  separate  the  thing  from.'  my  own 
high  estimation  of  his  character.  It  is  one  of  the  great 
est  problems  which  any  human  being  can  work  out, 
and  while  I  do  not  undertake  to  gauge  the  estimate 
which  the  men  who  follow  us  will  give,  I  am  pretty  sure 
that  in  that  estimate  will  be  seen  some  of  the  words  of 
the  Greek  philosopher :  ' '  He  was  a  friend  of  the  nation. 
He  needed  no  other  praise  than  this,  of  his  fellow-men. ' ' 


EGBERT  STUART  MAcARTHUR 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  ANDKEW  CARNEGIE, 
MAECH  17,  1909 

IT  has  been  my  good  fortune  to  meet  with  churchmen 
of  many  names  and  faiths,  but  never  in  all  the  years 
of  my  ministerial  life  have  I  had  such  fellowship  with 
saints  as  here  to-night.  It  has  been  St.  Mark,  St.  Glair, 
St.  Andrew,  and  St.  Patrick  from  the  beginning  of  the 
evening  until  even  now.  Don't  worry  about  St.  An 
drew's  other  half  of  his  halo;  he  '11  get  it,  all  right. 
Don't  worry  about  St.  Mark's  halo;  he  has  it  now. 
Does  n't  the  Good  Book  say  that  a  hoary  head  is  a 
crown  of  righteousness,  when  found  in  the  way  of  truth 
and  peace  ? 

I  am  proud  and  happy,  indeed,  to  welcome  you  to  this 
vicinity.  You  have  come  right  into  my  parish.  I  have 
long  believed  that  this  was  one  of  the  best  streets  of 
New  York,  that  Calvary  Church  was  one  of  the  best 
churches  in  New  York,  and  that  the  Lotos  Club  was 
rapidly  becoming  the  best  club  in  New  York.  So  we 
have  the  three  best  things  that  I  have  met  on  this  occa 
sion  in  this  vicinity. 

I  have  watched  the  construction  of  this  building  from 
the  blasting  and  the  laying  of  the  foundation-stone 
until  even  now.  It  has  been  a  joy  to  me  to  do  it  and  see 
this  superbly  beautiful  structure  adding  beauty,  charm, 

423 


424  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

and  financial  value  to  this  entire  street.  I  have  watched 
the  decoration  of  the  interior  as  well  as  the  erection  of 
the  walls  themselves,  and  I  have  thought  that  in  the 
matter  of  acoustics,  to  which  Dr.  St.  Clair  McKelway 
has  referred,  the  problem  has  certainly  been  solved  here 
to-night.  This  room  is  admirable  as  a  place  to  speak. 
This  club  is  known  all  over  this  country  and  all  over 
England,  Scotland,  Germany,  and  France,  and  in  the 
other  countries  of  Europe.  This  club  is  simply  a  home 
of  good-fellowship  and  of  inspiration  along  all  the  lines 
of  noble  endeavor  and  high  achievement,  and  I  think 
you  have  entered  upon  a  new  career  as  you  have  come 
into  this  part  of  our  great,  noble  city. 

I  join  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm  in  the  words  of 
eulogy  which  have  been  spoken  here  to-night  in  the  case 
of  your  and  our  distinguished  guest.  I  have  thought  of 
Mr.  Carnegie  in  connection  with  St.  Patrick.  There  is 
a  very  interesting  parallel,  if  I  could  detain  you  long 
enough,  but  I  shall  not,  between  these  two  men.  In  the 
first  place,  both  of  them  bore  remarkable  names.  St. 
Patrick's  first  name  was  Succat,  or  Succoth,  which 
means  "brave,  able  to  work."  Then  he  was  called 
Patrick,  from  Patricius,  which  means  "noble,  high 
born,  and  worthy. ' '  In  all  the  relations  of  life  he  justi 
fied  both  of  his  names. 

Andrew  Carnegie 's  name  is  just  as  significant  as  that 
of  St.  Patrick.  Andrew  is  Greek,  where  it  means 
"brave,  able  to  work,"  and  Carnegie  is  a  word  of  Ger 
manic  origin  which  means  "a  rock,  a  stone,  a  pile  of 
rocks,  a  pile  of  stones";  it  means  Carnegie  Hall,  Skibo 
Castle,  only  Skibo  is  not  Scotch  at  all ;  Skibo  is  a.  Norse 
word.  It  is  a  very  interesting  fact  that  this  Scotch 


ROBERT  STUART  MAcARTHUR       425 

American  has  a  Norse  word  to  describe  his  superb  castle 
in  Scotland. 

He  has  honored  Scotland  and  America;  he  honors 
both ;  he  honors  every  country  in  which  he  lives,  and  in 
which  he  scatters  his  munificent  benefactions.  Then 
again  St.  Patrick  and  St.  Andrew  were  both  remarkable 
missionaries.  They  both  were  born  in  Scotland,  though 
St.  Patrick  did  not  have  the  happiness  of  being  born  in 
Dunfermline.  He  could  n't  help  that,  of  course,  but  it 
was  a  misfortune.  They  both  left  Scotland  when  they 
were  little  boys;  they  did  n't  leave  Scotland  for  its 
good,  but  for  the  good  of  other  countries. 

Now  it  is  n't  lucky  to  be  called  a  philanthropist  or  a 
missionary,  but  St.  Andrew  can't  help  it,  because  he  is 
both.  I  am  a  truthful  man,  you  know,  and  I  can  safely 
say  that  what  St.  Patrick  did  for  Ireland,  St.  Andrew 
is  doing  for  the  world,  driving  out  snakes  of  bigotry  and 
ignorance  with  truth  and  education,  and  distributing 
libraries  with  intelligence  and  charity  and  loving-kind 
ness. 

When  he  has  done  his  work  to  its  fullest  degree,  the 
hero's  prize  of  peace  on  sea  and  on  land,  in  every 
palace,  on  every  hand,  and  in  every  heart  shall  come 
like  the  song  of  the  angels  that  echoed  over  the  plains  of 
Bethlehem  the  night  that  Christ  was  born;  shall  echo 
once  more  when  Andrew  Carnegie's  efforts  for  peace 
have  reached  their  full  perfection:  "Glory  to  God  in 
the  highest,  and  on  earth  peace  and  good  will  toward 
men."  I  give  you  the  other  half  of  your  halo,  even 
now,  St.  Andrew. 

There  is  one  point  in  which  St.  Andrew  and  myself 
are  alike.  I  have  spoken  of  the  resemblance  between 


426  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

him  and  St.  Patrick.  Mr.  Carnegie  and  I  both  had 
Highland  Scotch  mothers.  He  never  knew  my  mother, 
but  I  knew  his.  A  gentler,  sweeter,  queenlier,  diviner 
woman  than  Andrew  Carnegie's  mother  I  have  seldom 
seen  in  this  country,  or  in  any  other  country;  and  I 
never  saw  Andrew  Carnegie  and  his  mother  together 
but  I  was  at  a ,  loss  whether  the  more  to  admire  the 
mother's  love  for  the  noble  son,  or  the  noble  son's  love 
for  a  queenly  and  beautiful  mother. 

You  remember  the  inscription  on  the  Taj  Mahal, 
which  reads:  "To  the  Memory  of  an  Undying  Love." 
All  through  the  life  of  Andrew  Carnegie,  in  his  deeds 
of  kindness  and  loving  charity  and  beneficence,  I  hear 
echoing  the  inscription  on  that  tomb,  regarding  his 
mother :  ' '  To  the  Memory  of  an  Undying  Love. ' '  His 
mother  filled  his  heart  with  love,  and  put  the  crown  of 
her  affection  on  his  brow. 


JOHNSTON  FOBBES-EOBEETSON 

AT  THE  SUPPER  IN  HIS  HONOR,  APRIL  2,  1910 

I  FEEL  a  great  embarrassment  in  addressing  this  dis 
tinguished  assembly.  I  look  around  and  see  so  many 
notable  men,  distinguished  men  of  this  great  city,  and  I 
tell  you  frankly  that  I  fear  I  cannot  do  this  occasion 
justice.  Your  president  has  overwhelmed  me  with  his 
kind  remarks  about  my  work.  And  let  me  say  before  I 
go  any  farther— I  need  hardly  say,  indeed,  that  I  look 
upon  this  occasion  as  the  very  greatest  possible  honor. 
The  Lotos  Club  is  famous  throughout  the  English- 
speaking  world  for  its  hospitality  to  the  Britisher. 

I  suppose  you  would  expect  me  to  say  a  word  about 
the  stage  and  the  drama.  I  am  an  optimist  as  regards 
the  drama  and  the  interpreters  of  the  drama.  I  feel 
that  we  have  in  many  ways  advanced  enormously.  I 
can  look  back,  I  won't  say  how  many  years,  and  I  feel 
very  strongly  that  both  here  and  in  England  we  have 
advanced  the  drama  very  considerably.  In  some  re 
spects  we  have  advanced  in  the  most  wonderful  manner. 
We  have  advanced  in  the  way  in  which  plays  are  repre 
sented.  The  average  of  the  acting  is  very  high  at  the 
present  moment. 

I  remember  very  well  that  when  I  first  joined  my  call 
ing  in  London  things  were  very  different.  There  were 

427 


428  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

only  two  or  three  real  homes  of  the  drama,  and  the  per 
formances  were  of  rather  a  slipshod  character.  But  now, 
both  here  and  in  London,  we  see  representations  with 
great  detail,  great  care.  There  is  no  longer  the  "All 
right  to-night  bird,"  if  I  may  use  the  comparison,  the 
man  who  says  to  you,  "I  cannot  do  it  at  rehearsal,  but 
will  be  all  right  at  night. ' '  There  is  no  longer  the  dark 
horse — I  mean  the  man  or  woman  who  gives  no  sugges 
tion  at  rehearsal  of  what  he  or  she  is  going  to  do  at  the 
performance,  and  only  vaguely  hints  at  the  character 
interpreted;  and  when  the  night  of  the  performance 
comes,  everything  is  in  confusion,  because  he  or  she  very 
suddenly  changes  the  business,  or  lines,  and  throws  the 
rest  of  the  cast  into  the  most  distressing  uncertainty. 
That  person  generally  says  that  he  can't  act  without  an 
audience ;  and  I  think  you  may  take  it  as  a  fact  that  the 
person  who  says  he  can't  rehearse  properly,  can't  act  at 
rehearsal,  you  will  find  could  n't  get  any  audience  at  all. 

Now,  as  regards  the  drama,  I  feel  very  strongly  that 
there  have  been  and  there  are  plays  produced,  par 
ticularly  of  late,  of  what  I  might  call  a  feverish  nature, 
plays  that  are  described  by  people  when  they  come 
away  and  say,  "Well,  it  was  a  very  strong  play." 
Well,  that  only  means  one  thing,  that  it  was  just  a 
little  too  spicy. 

As  regards  the  acting,  as  I  have  said,  the  interpreta 
tion  of  the  drama,  I  am  persuaded  that  the  general 
trend,  the  general  excellence  of  the  average  acting,  is 
infinitely  better  than  it  was  when  I  first  went  on  the 
stage.  I  grant  you  that  we  have  among  us,  and  I  sup 
pose  we  always  shall  have,  the  ready-made  star  and  the 
inspired  amateur,  but  they  have  their  purpose.  The 


JOHNSTON  FORBES-ROBERTSON      429 

inspired  amateur  and  the  ready-made  star,  after  all, 
add  to  the  joy  of  nations. 

I  remember  meeting  one  inspired  amateur  when  I 
was  a  member  of  a  stock  company  at  Manchester  in 
England ;  and  at  that  particular  time  we  were  support 
ing  the  great  tragedian  Samuel  Phelps,  and  there  was 
one  lady  who  had  been  engaged,  Heaven  knows  why,  to 
play  certain  parts,  and  among  others  she  was  called 
upon  to  do  Lady  Teazle.  Well,  this  inspired  amateur 
was  full  of  all  sorts  of  ingenious  ideas,  and,  as  you  all 
very  well  remember,  the  opening  scene  is  the  quarrel 
scene  between  Sir  Peter  and  Lady  Teazle,  and  takes 
place  in  a  corridor.  Well,  at  rehearsal,  we  were  all 
intensely  rehearsing,  when  this  lady,  very  ambitious 
and  spelling  art  with  a  big  "A,"  a  very  dangerous 
practice,  and  full  of  individual  ideas,  to  the  horror  of 
the  company,  who  were  all  respectfully  standing  about 
the  great  tragedian  who  had  played  the  part  a  hundred 
times  or  more,  this  inspired  amateur  began  to  suggest 
to  Mr.  Phelps,  or,  rather,  to  press  upon  him,  all  sorts  of 
innovations. 

She  wanted  to  have  the  stage  fully  set,  with  a  quan 
tity  of  furniture,  and  Phelps  to  move  here,  or  there, 
and  dance  around,  and  move  around  the  furniture,  and 
add  what  she  considered  would  be  realism  to  the  quar 
rel  scene;  and  she  went  on  explaining  the  scene  and 
this  sort  of  thing  for  some  time,  and  at  last  we  realized 
that  the  storm  was  going  to  break.  For  Mr.  Phelps, 
who  was  just  walking  through  his  part,  and  had  his 
umbrella  in  his  hand,  thumped  upon  the  stage  with  the 
umbrella,  and  then  we  knew  something  was  coming. 
For  a  minute  he  did  n't  speak  a  word,  and  then  in  his 


430  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

heaviest  bass  he  said :  "Madam,  I  shall  be  here  to-night. 
Where  you  will  be,  God  only  knows." 

The  prurient  drama,  if  one  may  use  the  expression, 
is  only  a  thing  that  is  passing.  It  may  have  its  in 
fluence  in  a  way,  perhaps,  for  good,  but  in  the  mean 
time  it  is  undesirable ;  and  I  assure  you  it  is  a  delight 
to  find  that  there  is  in  this  city  one  who  has  steadily 
set  his  face  against  that  class  of  drama  through  all 
his  splendid  career.  For  instance,  I  would  like  to 
consider  the  influence  of  what  we  would  call  the  teacup- 
and-saucer  drama,  of  which  T.  W.  Robertson  was  the 
head.  Well,  the  teacup -and-saucer  drama  served  its 
purpose,  it  was  very  helpful  in  its  day,  and  taught  the 
interpreters  to  play  with  distinction  and  discretion, 
and  with  acceptability,  a  modern  comedy  of  modern 
life  and  surroundings,  and  it  has  had  much  influence 
upon  the  acting  of  the  future,  it  made  the  business  of 
the  company  much  simpler,  more  direct,  and  more 
truthful.  And  so  these  different  forms  of  drama  pass 
and  go,  but  still  I  firmly  believe  in  my  heart  of  hearts 
that  we  should  lift  higher  our  ideals  of  the  drama,  as 
we  have  lifted  higher  and  higher  our  ideals  of  its  inter 
pretation. 

Gentlemen,  you  know  that  there  has  been  instituted  a 
theatre  in  this  great  city  which  I  think  shows  us  very 
plainly  what  an  enormous  stride  has  been  made  in  my 
time.  I  am  thankful  and  delighted  to  find  that  you 
have  now  established  here  a  repertoire  playhouse,  and 
I  think  it  does  New  York  a  great  deal  of  credit. 

I  am  afraid  to  mention  the  number  of  plays  that  have 
been  read  at  that  theatre.  It  amounts  to  many  hun 
dreds.  I  was  complaining  to  my  friend  the  late  John 


JOHNSTON  FORBES-ROBERTSON      431 

Golden,  one  of  our  most  distinguished  actors— I  was 
complaining  of  the  difficulty  I  had  in  writing  back  to 
a  young  author  my  regrets  that  I  could  not  consider 
his  play  for  production,  and  my  friend  John  Golden 
told  me  that  on  one  occasion  he  simplified  that  difficulty 
by  writing  to  the  man  who  had  sent  him  a  hopeless  play, 
and  he  wrote  in  this  way : 

"MY  DEAR  SIR:  I  have  read  your  play— oh,  my  dear  sir! 
"Yours  very  truly, 

"JOHN  GOLDEN." 

I  told  the  story  of  that  letter  for  a  good  many  years, 
I  laughed  heartily  at  it  when  my  dear  friend  told  it  to 
me,  and  so  did  he,  and  it  was  always  received  as  it  has 
been  received  to-night.  But  on  one  occasion,  in  my 
dressing-room,  I  told  it  to  one  who  was  my  secretary, 
and  to  my  amazement  he  did  n't  laugh,  and  I  was  ex 
tremely  put  out.  And  it  occurred  to  me  that  surely  it 
was  the  secretary's  duty  to  laugh  at  my  funny  story. 
And  I  was  so  annoyed  at  it  that  I  turned  around  to  him 
—I  was  making  up— and  said,  "You  don't  seem  to  be 
amused  with  that  story."  And  the  poor  fellow  very 
frankly  said,  "No,  no;  I  was  the  one  who  received  the 
letter." 

Well,  I  have  a  bad  memory,  but  at  least  that  memory 
is  capable  of  retaining  for  all  the  rest  of  my  life  the 
kindness,  the  sympathy— I  want  a  stronger  word— may 
I  say  affection?— that  has  been  literally  heaped  upon 
me  by  all  classes  of  society,  all  members,  and  all  kinds 
of  people  in  this  your  great  city  of  New  York. 


WILLIAM  WINTER 

AT  THE  SUPPER  TO  J.  FOEBES-EOBEETSON, 
APEIL  2,  1910 

THERE  was  a  time  when,  perhaps,  I  might  have 
succeeded  in  attempting  to  pay  an  adequate  trib 
ute  to  the  fine  artistic  and  beneficent  achievement  of 
Johnston  Forbes-Robertson.  That  achievement  has 
long  been  well  known  to  me,  and  I  have  long  held  it  in 
the  highest  esteem.  I  should  be  glad  and  grateful  if,  at 
this  moment,  I  could  express  that  esteem  in  potent, 
fervid,  moving  eloquence ;  but,  while  the  feelings  of  age 
are  deep  the  expression  of  them  is  difficult.  My  mean 
ing  is  very  earnest.  My  words  must  be  few. 

The  dramatic  artist  whose  range  is  so  wide  that  it 
extends  from  Chastelard  to  Scarpia,  from  Jeremy 
Diddler  to  Arthur  Dimmesdale,  from  Buckingham  to 
Benedick,  from  Lysander  to  Leontes,  from  Orlando  to 
Romeo  and  from  Mercutio  to  Hamlet— the  dramatic 
artist  who  has  played  all  those  parts— and  many  others 
—playing  all  of  them  thoroughly  well  and  some  of 
them  greatly,  needs  no  assurance,  from  any  source, 
that  he  stands  in  the  front  rank  of  intellectual  actors. 
Such  is  the  professional  position  of  the  distinguished 
guest  who,  on  this  interesting  occasion,  affords  to  us 
the  privilege  of  doing  honor  to  the  dramatic  art  and  of 

432 


WILLIAM  WINTER  433 

doing  credit  to  our  judgment  and  taste  by  doing  honor 
to  him. 

I  have  known  Forbes-Robertson,  as  actor,  painter, 
author,  editor,  critic— and  a  very  good  one— and— if  I 
may  venture  so  to  say— personal  friend,  for  a  quarter 
of  a  century.  He  is  a  much  younger  man  than  I  am. 
He  belongs  to  a  generation  later  than  mine.  But  as  an 
actor  he  was  educated  in  the  methods  of  the  Old  School 
— that  school  with  which  all  of  my  long  life  I  have 
been,  in  a  certain  sense,  associated,  and  which  now,  I 
believe,  it  is  somewhat  customary  to  disparage;  and  I 
think  that  he  will  not  widely  dissent  from  my  opinion 
that  his  present  noble  eminence  in  the  dramatic  pro 
fession,  while  largely  due  to  his  brilliant  inherent 
powers,  is  also  partly  due  to  the  splendid  early  train 
ing  that  he  received  in  the  ways  of  that  Old  School. 

For  Mr.  Robertson,  as  it  happened,  was  taught  by 
honest,  sturdy,  genuine,  thoroughgoing  old  Samuel 
Phelps,  the  stalwart  veteran  chieftain  of  The  Wells,  a 
man  who  conducted  a  first-class  theatre  in  London  for 
nineteen  years ;  who  successfully  produced  thirty-three 
of  the  thirty-seven  plays  of  Shakespeare,  who  acted 
almost  all  of  the  great  tragic  and  many  of  the  great 
comic  parts  in  the  old  legitimate  English  drama ;  whose 
range  was  so  wide  that  it  touched  Macbeth  at  the  one 
extreme  and  Sir  Pertinax  Macsychophant  at  the  other ; 
who  finally  surpassed  Charles  Kean— not  an  easy  thing 
to  do,  as  I  can  testify,  because  I  saw  that  actor  often 
and  studied  him  well— and  who  held  his  ground,  for 
years  and  until  the  end,  as  the  admitted  rival  of  Ma- 
cready— the  most  potential  and  formidable  intellect  that 
appeared  on  the  English-speaking  stage  between  the 


434  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

time  of  the  memorable  John  Philip  Kemble  and  the 
time  of  the  illustrious  Henry  Irving.  Such  a  student 
as  Forbes-Robertson,  guided  by  such  a  teacher  as 
Samuel  Phelps,  must  have  learned  his  art;  and  Mr. 
Robertson  has  given  ample  proof  that  he  did  learn  it, 
and  that  he  learned  it  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word. 

I  have  no  sympathy  with  any  form  of  bigotry,  and 
especially  I  repudiate  the  bigotry  that  would  unduly 
extol  the  Past  in  order,  by  invidious  comparison,  to  de 
preciate  and  disparage  the  Present.  Nevertheless,  when 
I  contemplate  the  condition  of  the  contemporary  stage 
—a  condition  which  I  know  to  be,  in  some  respects,  de 
graded  and  deplorable,  but  which  I  believe  to  be  tem 
porary—I  am  impelled  to  cling,  with  a  tenacity  which 
I  cannot  deem  unreasonable,  to  my  stanch  preference 
for  that  older— and  better— school  of  acting,  in  which 
impersonation  and  elocution  were  equally  cultivated 
and  exemplified,  and  for  that  affectionate,  romantic 
popular  feeling  relative  to  the  stage,  which  once  was 
widely  diffused,  but  which  is  dormant  now. 

I  might  mention  many  names  of  actors  of  that  Old 
School,  actors  eminent  in  my  earlier  time,  all  now  dead 
and  gone,  and,  mostly,  forgotten,  whose  places  have 
never  been  filled.  Placide,  Burton,  Blake,  Murdoch, 
Gilbert,  Warren,  Wallack,  Forrest,  Booth,  Hackett, 
Brooke,  Davenport,  Owens,  Jefferson,  Florence,  Fisher, 
Lewis— those  are  only  a  few  of  them— and  I  might 
mention,  also,  the  significant  fact  that  the  best  actors 
on  our  stage  to-day,  such  as  Forbes-Robertson,  Robert 
Mantell,  James  0  'Neill,  Otis  Skinner  and  John  Mason, 
are  survivals  of  an  earlier  time  or  heirs  to  the  old  faith. 
What  was  the  charm  of  those  old  actors?  The  charm 


WILLIAM  WINTER  435 

was,  in  one  word,  Poetry.  They  had  defects,  no  doubt ; 
nothing  in  the  world  is  absolutely  perfect;  but  they 
cherished  ideals;  they  did  lovely  things,  because  they 
loved  to  do  them.  They  wrought  in  an  atmosphere  of 
romance,  and  they  found  a  ready  response  in  the  ro 
mantic  enthusiasm  of  the  public.  Is  that  charm  preva 
lent  now  ?  Is  that  atmosphere  of  romance  apparent,  to 
any  considerable  extent,  upon  the  stage,  or  in  front  of 
it,  to-day  ?  And,  if  not,  why  not  ?  Why  is  it  absent  ? 
This  is  the  same  glorious  world.  The  sun  still  rises  in 
majesty  and  sets  in  splendor.  Still  the  south  wind 
breathes  "upon  a  bank  of  violets,  stealing  and  giving 
odor/'  Human  nature  exists  unchanged.  Every  im 
pulse  of  goodness,  every  instinct  of  kindness,  every 
aspiration  to  nobility,  is  vital  in  the  soul.  Youth,  inno 
cence,  virtue  and  heroism  are  as  much  in  the  world 
to-day  as  ever  they  were !  Art  is  still  potential.  Genius 
is  still  sublime.  And  still  the  fires  of  love  and  hope 
and  faith  are  glowing  with  immortal  splendor  on  the 
living  altars  of  the  human  heart ! 

Much  is  heard  from  time  to  time  of  "the  Inde 
pendent  Theatre, "  "  the  Drama  of  Ideas, "  "  Naturalis 
tic  Literature  "— whatever  that  may  be— and  a  peculiar 
foggy  efflorescence  of  diseased  mentality  called  "New 
Thought. ' '  Inspection  of  those  fads  discovers  that  their 
advocates  are  desirous  to  be  "emancipated"  from  some 
thing.  The  nature  of  their  fetters  is  ambiguous,  but 
apparently  they  are  wishful  to  be  "  emancipated ' '  from 
the  trammels  of  duty,  morality  and  decency.  I  believe 
that  the  whole  fabric  of  those  fads  is  rank  and  mis 
chievous  folly.  Pure  literature,  like  pure  air  and  pure 
water,  was  found  long  ago,  and  it  has  not  been  and  it 


436  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

never  .will  be  superseded  by  any  new  discovery.  In 
honoring  Mr.  Robertson,  which  I  do  with  all  my  heart, 
I  once  more  testify  my  allegiance  to  that  established 
principle  and  immovable  standard. 

My  labor,  like  my  life,  is  drawing  toward  a  close.  It 
has,  from  first  to  last,  been  devoted  to  one  service— to 
the  Ministry  of  Beauty.  That  is  the  consummate 
agency  of  civilization,  and  that  should  be  the  supreme 
purpose  of  all  art.  "Whatever  I  have  read  or  thought  or 
seen  or  known  of  the  Beautiful,  I  have  wished  should 
predominate  as  an  impulse,  imperial  and  absolute,  over 
the  lives  of  the  men  and  women  of  my  time.  When  I 
have  roamed  in  the  storied  places  of  the  Old  "World; 
when  I  have  listened  to  the  silver  chimes  of  Heidelberg, 
or  paused  in  the  classic  groves  of  Oxford  and  Cam 
bridge  and  seen  the  solemn  shrines  and  stately  temples 
that  rise  so  glorious  upon  those  luxuriant,  incomparable 
lawns;  when  I  have  mused  in  the  haunted  gloom  of 
gray  old  Winchester  Cathedral,  austerely  magnificent, 
and  reverend  with  the  memories  of  a  thousand  years; 
when  I  have  lingered,  awe-stricken,  in  the  shadow  of 
massive  Canterbury,  while  the  green  ivy  was  trembling 
on  its  gray,  wind-beaten  walls,  and  the  rooks  were 
hovering  above  it,  and  the  glory  of  the  western  sun  was 
flooding  its  great  windows,  and  the  music  of  the  throb 
bing  organ  within  its  bosom  seemed  like  a  voice  from 
heaven— then,  deep  in  my  heart,  I  have  felt  the  pas 
sionate  desire— always  present  with  me,  if  not  always 
aflame— that  the  celestial  influence  of  Beauty,  before 
which  sin  is  impossible  and  wrong  and  sorrow  disap 
pear,  might  be  more  and  more  communicated  to  my  land 
and  made  perpetual  to  bless  my  people.  That  influence 


WILLIAM  WINTER  437 

is  peculiarly  vested  in  the  mission  of  the  actor  and  in 
the  native  function  of  the  stage.  That  influence  has 
been  at  once  the  inspiration  and  the  accomplishment  of 
the  noble  actor  around  whom  you  are  assembled  now, 
and  to  whom  I  pay,  as  best  I  can,  my  humble  tribute. 


FLOWER-DE-LUCE 

To  him  whose  charm  of  magic  art 

Has  made  ideal  beauty  live, 
To  soothe  the  mind  and  cheer  the  heart, 
What  shall  we  give? 

What  can  we  give,  to  feed  his  flame 

Of  joy,  in  these  victorious  days, 
But  tender  love,  and  true  acclaim, 
And  grateful  praise? 

He  came,  as  comes  in  woodland  dell 

The  earliest  violet  of  the  year, 
That  tells,  yet  hardly  seems  to  tell, 
That  spring  is  here. 

Sweet,  modest,  gentle,  simple,  true, 

His  art  pursued  one  clear  design— 
By  power  and  pathos  to  subdue, 
And  to  refine. 

He  nurs'd  no  envy,  sought  no  strife 

With  worldlings  for  the  world's  applause, 
But  only  nobly  gave  his  life 
To  Beauty's  cause. 


438  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

So  year  by  year  his  fair  renown 

An  ever-wid'ning  circle  spread, 
Thick  sewn  with  amaranth  to  crown 
His  royal  head. 

Still  may  he  move  in  that  white  fame 

Genius  and  Truth  alone  possess, 
And  ev'ry  voice  that  speaks  his  name 
Speak  but  to  bless ! 

Full  be  the  tide  and  free  the  flow 

Of  fortune,  while  his  years  increase, 
And,  over  all,  the  sunset  glow 
Of  perfect  peace ! 


LAURENCE  IRVING 

AT  THE  SUPPER  TO  J.  FORBES-ROBERTSON, 
APRIL  2,  1910 

I  KNEW  the  time  when  Forbes-Robertson  and  Henry 
Irving  appeared  in  conjunction  in  "King  Henry 
VIII.'7  I  hardly  remember  how  many  times  I  saw 
those  fine  performances,  but  certainly,  when  I  bring 
them  back  to  memory,  I  say  to  myself,  When  shall  we 
see  such  others  ? 

The  greatest  tribute,  the  greatest  testimony  I  think  I 
remember  ever  hearing  to  an  actor  was  at  the  meeting 
in  London  to  further  the  object  of  the  national  English 
theatre,  an  object  that  you  have  certainly  got  ahead  of 
us  in  achieving.  One  of  the  speakers  read  over  a  list 
of  the  most  celebrated  English  actors  of  the  day,  and 
although  Forbes-Robertson  was  absent  himself,  there 
was  such  a  wealth  of  applause  at  the  mention  of  his 
name  that  every  other  had  certainly  to  take  a  sec 
ondary  place.  Our  public,  as  well  as  yours,  I  am  sure, 
will  remember  that  Forbes-Robertson  has  never  allowed 
his  pocket  to  influence  him  in  the  work  which  he  loved 
to  perform ;  and  many  lovers  of  the  theatre  in  England, 
I  think,  have  felt  that  the  fullness  of  his  pocket  was  not 
always  commensurate  with  his  fame  as  an  artist. 

Gentlemen,  I  must  say  myself  that  when  I  hear  all 
this  about  the  prurient  drama,  I  perhaps  am  a  little  in 

439 


440  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  dark.  Mr.  Lee  Shubert  is  here  at  my  side.  In  a 
sense  I  have  been  a  play-builder.  I  don't  quite  know 
what  prurient  drama  is.  I  do  know  that  one-fourth  of 
Shakespeare's  works  cannot  be  spoken  in  public,  and  I 
consider  "The  Merry  Widow"  a  highly  deleterious  en 
tertainment.  But  it  does  seem  to  me  that  it  is  a  good 
thing  that  we  have  not  remained  stranded  at  "The 
Lady  of  Lyons ' '  and  *  *  The  Love  Chase. ' '  For  my  part, 
I  would  give  all  the  performances  of  Roger  and  Claude 
Melnotte  which  have  been  played,  I  would  give  them  all, 
for  Mr.  Will  Gilbert's  "Brothers,"  or  other  dramas  of 
that  kind  I  could  name ;  and  it  does  seem  to  me  that  the 
difference  is  that  whereas  formerly  the  dramatists  wrote 
the  lines  that  were  humbly  followed,  the  dramatists  now, 
the  greatest  modern  dramatists,  deal  with  the  funda 
mental  questions  of  life  in  a  sterner  fashion  and  handle 
them  as  a  part  of  their  scheme,  and  as  conveying  a 
moral  which  they  desire  to  impress ;  and  from  all  I  hear, 
and  from  all  I  read,  I  don't  think  that  those  morals 
were  at  any  time  more  in  need  of  being  impressed  than 
at  present. 

Well,  I  am  afraid  that  what  I  am  saying,  after  the 
eloquent  words  we  have  heard,  may  seem  rather 
brusque,  but  I  think  that  before  the  drama  can  again 
spread  its  wings  and  reach  the  great  height  it  had 
reached  under  the  inspiration  of  Shakespeare,  we  must, 
as  Eugene  Walter  has  done  in  America,  Rostand  in 
France,  and  Shaw  in  England,  keep  close  to  life,  and 
we  must  examine  the  dark  corners  before  we  can  illumi 
nate  the  lighter  ones. 


FEANK  E.  LAWEENCE 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  CHAELES  E.  HUGHES, 
NOVEMBEE  19,  1910 

AT  this,  the  beginning  of  the  forty-first  season  of 
-XJL  your  festivities,  I  have  to  congratulate  you  upon 
a  continuation  of  the  good  fortune  which  has  attended 
the  club  in  the  past,  for  we  have  to-night  succeeded  in 
beguiling  a  most  illustrious  guest,  engrossed  in  the  most 
arduous  duties,  to  lay  aside  official  cares  and  come  here 
to  spend  a  quiet  evening  in  the  serene  atmosphere  of  the 
Lotos. 

When  the  distinguished  gentleman  who  honors  us 
with  his  presence  to-night  was  last  with  us,  he  was  at 
the  beginning  of  a  second  term  of  office  as  the  Governor 
of  the  great  State  of  New  York.  He  had  passed  through 
a  first  term,  a  period  of  storm  and  stress,  striking  great 
blows  on  behalf  of  good  government,  banishing  the 
powers  of  darkness  from  the  State  Capitol  to  a  degree 
previously  unknown,  and  establishing  himself  as  the 
representative,  not  of  a  party,  but  of  the  whole  people 
of  the  Empire  State.  Without  being  in  the  least  a 
politician,  his  career  seemed  to  carry  a  lesson  which 
sometimes  the  most  consummate  politicians  fail  to  un 
derstand.  And  it  is  this:  that  the  surest  foundation 
upon  which  to  rest  the  affection  and  confidence  of  the 
people  is  for  a  public  man  always  to  adhere  inflexibly  to 

441 


442  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

that  which  he  believes  to  be  right,  and  never  to  be 
swerved  from  the  highest  ideals  of  public  duty. 

When  Governor  Hughes  was  last  our  guest,  in  the 
sincerity  of  our  hearts  and  the  shortness  of  our  political 
vision,  we  considered  him  a  prospective  President 
of  the  United  States,  and  we  hailed  and  acclaimed  him 
accordingly.  He  passed  through  a  second  term  as  gov 
ernor,  going  steadily  from  one  measure  of  public  use 
fulness  to  another,  like  one  of  those  described  by  James 
Martineau,  "whose  worship  is  action,  and  whose  action 
is  ceaseless  aspiration, "  but  always  completely  un 
selfish,  and  with  no  other  aspiration  than  an  aspiration 
for  the  public  good. 

There  are  men  here  of  all  shades  of  opinion;  yet, 
whatever  our  political  beliefs,  there  is  not  one  of  us 
who  does  not  admire  the  achievements  of  Governor 
Hughes. 

We  are  privileged  at  this  time  to  greet  him  at  the 
close  of  one  great  career  and  the  beginning  of  another. 
The  public,  I  venture  to  say,  learned  of  his  acceptance 
of  a  seat  upon  the  bench  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States  with  mingled  feelings  of  gratification  and 
regret;  regret  that  a  commanding  figure  was  to  be 
removed  from  the  activities  of  public  life,  and  gratifica 
tion  that  the  greatest  tribunal  in  the  land  was  hence 
forth  to  be  strengthened  by  his  presence. 

The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  is  one  of 
the  bulwarks  of  our  liberty.  Its  judgments  have  aided 
immeasurably  in  building,  molding,  and  welding  to 
gether  this  nation.  It  is  the  court  of  final  resort  for  this 
great  commonwealth  of  more  than  ninety  million  peo 
ple.  It  decides  interests  and  questions  larger  than  those 


FRANK  E.  LAWRENCE  443 

which,  are  decided  by  any  other  human  tribunal.  Be 
fore  its  bar  sovereign  States  are  summoned,  and  the 
proudest  State  in  the  Union  submits  to  its  decrees  as 
obediently  as  the  humblest  individual  in  the  land. 

Whoever  strikes  a  blow  at  the  confidence  of  the  peo 
ple  in  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  strikes 
a  blow  at  the  security  of  our  government.  And  when 
ever  confidence  in  our  highest  tribunal  shall  become 
impaired,  then,  indeed,  will  our  institutions  be  in 
danger. 

For  nearly  one  hundred  and  twenty  years  the  judg 
ments  of  this  great  court  have  received  the  unhesitating 
acquiescence  of  the  people.  Its  judges  have  been  men 
of  purity  and  righteousness,  taken  from  those  most 
capable  of  administering  the  law.  It  is  of  untold  im 
portance  to  us  and  to  our  posterity  that  the  task  of 
interpreting  the  law  should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of 
the  most  capable  men  in  each  generation,  and  it  is  a 
satisfaction  to  us  to  believe  that  throughout  this  genera 
tion,  and  we  hope  for  many  years  to  come,  the  court 
in  which  John  Marshall  sat,  the  court  where  Joseph 
Story  sat,  is  to  be  strengthened  and  its  capacity  en 
larged  by  the  presence  and  participation  in  its  delibera 
tions  of  Mr.  Justice  Charles  E.  Hughes. 


CHAELES  E.  HUGHES 

AT  THE  DINNER  IN  HIS  HONOE,  NOVEMBER  19,  1910 

(UPON  HIS    BECOMING  AN  ASSOCIATE  JUSTICE  OF  THE 
SUPREME  COURT  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES) 

IT  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  make  adequate  re 
sponse  to  this  cordial  greeting.  At  best  I  can  speak 
only  the  deep  appreciation  of  this  renewed  pledge  of 
your  good  will  and  your  friendly  interest. 

Two  years  ago  I  was  introduced  to  the  charm  and 
unalloyed  delight  of  this  society.  I  remember  how, 
then,  timidly  I  shrank  from  the  rhetorical  grasp  of  your 
eloquent  president,  as  he  led  me  along  the  golden  path 
of  his  fancy.  But  I  knew  as  much  and  as  little  of  the 
future  as  did  he ;  and  once  more  I  find  myself  in  circum 
stances  even  recently  wholly  unforeshadowed  and  un- 
imagined. 

I  am  glad  to  come  into  the  warm  sunshine  of  this 
company,  and  in  saying  this  I  hasten  to  add  that  I 
imply  not  the  slightest  reflection  upon  the  temperature 
of  the  judicial  chamber.  I  desire  only  to  express  the 
deep  sense  of  obligation  that  I  feel  for  the  encourage 
ment  and  the  inspiration  that  you  give.  I  know  that  in 
an  excess  of  generous  commendation  you  desire  to 
emphasize  the  just  confidence  that  any  public  officer 
may  have,  of  securing  the  friendly  regard  of  his  con 
stituency,  if  only  he  will  try  to  serve  according  to  his 

444 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  445 

conception  of  his  duty ;  and  I  am  glad  to  furnish  in  any 
way  an  occasion  for  illustrating  how  even  a  modest 
effort  may  receive  such  a  rich  reward. 

I  speak  to-night  under  limitations  wholly  unfamiliar. 
I  cannot  talk  to  you  of  issues,  past,  present  or  future. 
It  is  my  duty  now  to  hear  appeals,  and  not  to  make 
them. 

It  is  a  tradition,  happily  well  established  and  which 
we  must  do  our  utmost  to  conserve,  that  our  judges 
shall  know  no  politics  and  no  partisanship.  It  is  their 
high  privilege  to  uphold  the  Constitution  and  to  apply 
the  law  with  fidelity ;  and  there  can  be  no  greater  am 
bition. 

Nor  would  I  speak  to  you  of  the  burdens  of  executive 
office ;  you  make  me  forget  those.  It  is  one  of  the  fortu 
nate  things  of  life  that  it  is  the  agreeable  experiences 
that  we  remember;  and  we  shed  our  sorrows  easily. 
Rather  in  this  brief  and  desultory  address,  I  would 
speak  of  the  inestimable  privilege  of  public  service.  It 
is,  in  a  democratic  community,  the  duty  of  every  one 
to  serve  the  public  as  opportunity  may  offer;  but  the 
priceless  advantage  of  high  office  is  the  opportunity  of 
uninterrupted  and  unreserved  service,  with  no  thought 
save  for  the  public  good.  No  matter  what  obstacles  may 
be  encountered,  no  matter  what  anxieties  may  be  sus 
tained,  there  is  an  exhilaration,  not  to  say  an  ex 
altation,  in  the  thought  that  life  has  offered  the 
opportunity  to  one  to  give  himself  wholly  for  the  pub 
lic  good,  in  the  service  of  a  free  people,  by  reason  of 
their  choice. 

I  do  not  mean  to  imply  that  there  is  any  hesitation 
with  regard  to  accepting  public  office,  or  any  con- 


446  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

spicuous  lack  of  zeal  in  its  pursuit ;  but  sometimes  even 
the  intelligent  refer  to  public  office  with  a  flippancy 
that  speaks  ill  of  their  conception  of  the  government 
under  which  they  live. 

Public  office  is  the  highest  opportunity  that  can  come 
to  a  free  citizen ;  and  it  is  one  of  the  great  pleasures  of 
holding  office,  that  quickly,  with  the  discharge  of  its 
duties,  comes  a  realization  of  the  responsiveness  of  the 
people  to  every  sincere  effort  to  serve.  I  go  out  of  my 
four  years  of  service  as  the  governor  of  this  State  with 
a  profound  faith  in  our  institutions.  I  go  from  many 
experiences  which  at  the  time  seemed  grievous,  realiz 
ing  that  underneath  the  turmoil  and  the  conflict  of 
opinion  and  interest,  there  is  a  strong  current  of  in 
telligence  and  good  sense  on  the  part  of  a  people  whose 
opportunities  for  education  and  for  intercourse  have 
never  been  equaled.  And  it  is  difficult  to  convey  to 
another  the  impression  that  one  gets  in  office,  of  being 
surrounded  by  a  host  of  unseen  forces,  operating  for 
the  benefit  of  the  community,  and  ready  to  work  in 
support  of  every  measure  well  conceived  and  faithfully 
declared.  Apart  from  the  obvious  agencies  of  public 
opinion,  there  are  many  groups  of  citizens  interested  in 
important  public  causes.  In  many  of  these  groups 
men  are  brought  together  with  entire  unselfishness,  and 
are  devoting  their  time  and  energy  freely  to  what  they 
conceive  to  be  the  public  interest.  Their  zeal  is  some 
times  embarrassing,  and  their  demands  cannot  always 
be  granted  as  they  would  desire  to  have  them  granted. 
Many  such  movements  easily  lend  themselves  to  ex 
treme  measures  which  reflection  cannot  commend ;  and 
the  busy  man,  engrossed  in  the  affairs  of  his  particular 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  447 

line  of  work,  often  loses  sight  of  the  extent  of  unselfish 
effort  that  is  being  put  forth  in  different  communities 
of  the  State  in  order  that  the  cause  of  public  govern 
ment  may  be  advanced.  The  executive  comes  to  a  sense 
of  cooperation  with  a  variety  of  helpful  movements ;  he 
comes  to  regard  himself  as,  to  an  extent,  a  trustee  of 
public  opinion  with  regard  to  many  desirable  ends. 
And  so  it  is  that,  however  opposed,  whatever  the  con 
flict,  there  is  a  constant  and  abiding  sense  of  sup 
port,  which,  in  addition  to  the  satisfaction  resulting 
from  the  performance  of  what  is  conceived  to  be  duty, 
makes  the  holding  of  high  office  a  conspicuous  privi 
lege. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  express  to  the  peo 
ple  of  the  State  my  sense  of  gratitude  at  the  confidence 
they  have  reposed  in  me.  After  all,  it  is  not  the  par 
ticular  thing  that  is  done  that  is  so  important,  in  my 
judgment,  as  the  way  of  doing  it.  And  it  is  making 
our  institutions  work,  as  they  were  intended  to  work, 
according  to  those  simple  principles  of  government 
understood  of  all  men,  so  easily  apprehended,  and 
so  difficult  in  application,  that  commands  the  best 
efforts  and  all  the  ability  and  strength  that  one  may 
possess.  It  is  the  spirit  of  our  institutions,  of  impar 
tiality  in  administration,  of  efficiency  in  government, 
which  constantly  calls  to  the  officer  like  a  shining  light, 
through  any  fog,  despite  the  tortuousness  of  the  path, 
and  unfailingly  helps  him  forward  toward  the  desired 
goal. 

My  friends,  nine-tenths— and  this  I  believe  I  can  say 
without  transgressing  any  of  those  limitations  to  which 
my  tongue  is  yet  a  stranger— nine-tenths  of  adminis- 


448  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

tration  and  of  government  has  nothing  in  it  of  any 
legitimate  partisan  consequence.  Differ  as  men  may 
with  regard  to  particular  measures  and  policies,  the 
scope  of  administration  invites  fidelity  and  a  devotion 
to  those  ends  commonly  appreciated.  Therein  may  be 
found  the  reason  for  the  responsiveness  which  the  pub 
lic  officer  may  count  upon  in  seeking  to  call  on  any 
other  to  come  to  his  aid;  and  however  potent  it  may 
seem  to  be,  he  will  utterly  fail  unless  he  can  convey  to 
his  constituency  the  impression  that  the  chief  end  is 
neither  partisan  nor  personal,  but  to  carry  the  govern 
ment  along  the  commonly  accepted  lines  of  impartial 
and  efficient  administration. 

But  it  is  not  my  purpose  to  speak  formally  or  at 
length.  I  desire  simply  to  thank  you  from  the  bottom 
of  my  heart  for  a  greeting  with  which  I  am  deeply 
touched.  I  have  been  transferred  to  another  sphere  of 
effort.  Justice  must  ever  be  the  chief  concern  of  de 
mocracy.  If  we  are  to  have  laws,  they  must  be  inter 
preted.  If  we  are  to  have  constitutions,  embodying  the 
fundamental  agreement  of  the  people  in  their  defini 
tion  and  in  their  limitation  of  powers,  they  must  be 
enforced.  The  administration  of  justice  is  the  final 
security  of  the  liberty  that  we  have  won;  and  is  the 
final  security  for  the  equal  opportunity  that  we  desire. 
However  lofty  may  be  the  conception  of  the  opportu 
nities  of  leadership  afforded  by  executive  office,  or  of 
the  highest  prerogative  of  those  elected  to  make  the 
laws  of  a  free  people,  we  must  rest  our  final  confidence 
for  the  perpetuity  of  our  institutions  upon  an  impar 
tial,  able,  unselfish  administration  of  justice  by  our 
courts. 


CHARLES  E.  HUGHES  449 

I  thank  you  for  your  encouraging  God-speed.  This 
is  not  the  place  or  the  time  to  refer  to  the  work  of  the 
courts.  I  do  desire  to  say,  that  I  have  assumed  this 
new  duty  with  the  deepest  sense  of  responsibility ;  and, 
strengthened  by  your  support,  I  enter  upon  this  life- 
work  with  but  one  ambition,  and  that  is,  through  it  to 
give  to  this  nation  whatever  ability  and  strength  I 
possess. 


DAVID  H.  GEEEE 

(PROTESTANT  EPISCOPAL  BISHOP  OF  NEW  YORK) 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  CHAELES  E.  HUGHES, 
NOVEMBEE  19,  1910 

I  SHARE  with  you  your  sincere  and  profound  ad 
miration  for  your  distinguished  and  honored  guest 
to-night.  My  association  with  him  dates  from  an  early 
day,  when  I  was  a  young  clergyman  in  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  and  he  was  a  student  in  Brown  Univer 
sity  and  an  occasional  member  of  my  congregation. 
For  a  time  at  least  I  had  an  advantage  over  him,  in 
that  he  had  obediently  to  hear  and  receive  my  charge 
to  him  and  could  n't  answer  back. 

Since  then  I  have  followed  his  career  with  a  lively 
interest,  and  have  not  been  surprised  to  find  that  he 
has  gone  steadily  on  and  up  in  fulfillment  of  those 
staunch  and  sterling  qualities  of  which  he  gave  such 
early  promise.  I  am  pleased  to  know  that  my  associa 
tion  with  him,  slight  and  tenuous  as  it  has  been,  is  to 
continue  to  the  end. 

A  few  weeks  ago,  when  I  was  passing  through  the 
city  of  "Washington,  finding  that  I  had  a  little  time  to 
spare,  I  called  at  the  White  House  to  pay  my  respects 
to  the  President.  I  found  Mr.  Justice  Hughes  just 
coming  out,  and  after  we  had  exchanged  greetings  he 
said  to  me,  "I  find  that  there  is  a  little  bond  of  union; 

450 


DAVID  H.  GREER  451 

between  us.  My  lot  in  Woodlawn  Cemetery  is  imme 
diately  next  to  yours."  And  I  assure  you  it  was  a 
satisfaction  to  me  to  know  that,  however  inconspicuous 
my  own  path  in  life  may  be,  yet  in  death  we  shall  not 
be  divided. 

But,  Mr.  President  and  gentlemen,  the  work  of  the 
judiciary,  as  you  have  just  heard  it  so  eloquently  de 
scribed,  is,  after  all,  substantially,  as  I  interpret  it,  the 
work  of  the  pulpit.  The  purpose,  the  ultimate  purpose 
of  both  is  the  same,  to  maintain  or  to  interpret  and 
analyze  that  principle,  that  quality,  that  great  moral 
and  spiritual  something  that  flies  everlastingly  around 
the  human  soul  and  from  which  it  cannot  escape.  In 
doing  this,  the  courts  must  stand  for  justice  and  right 
eousness,  in  spite  of  all  clamor  and  outcry. 

It  reminds  me  of  the  fable:  a  household  god,  made 
of  wax,  which  had  been  carelessly  left  near  the  fire 
where  some  valuable  porcelain  was  baking,  began  to 
melt,  and  it  made  a  complaint  against  the  element. 
"See,"  it  said,  "how  cruelly  you  treat  me.  To  those 
things  you  give  durability,  while  me  you  destroy." 
The  element  answered,  "You  have  nothing  to  complain 
of;  you  have  been  well  served  and  long.  As  for  me,  I 
am  a  fire  always  and  forever."  Righteousness  or  jus 
tice  is  righteousness  forever,  and  as  such  it  must  be 
maintained. 

It  is  for  this  that  our  great  judicial  tribunal  has 
stood,  Mr.  President,  as  you  have  said  here,  sir,  in  the 
past ;  for  this  it  stands  to-day ;  and  as  long  as  its  bench 
is  composed  of  such  persons  as  your  honored  guest  of 
to-night,  it  will  forever  stand.  That  is  the  value,  that 
is  the  strength  of  our  judiciary,  and  it  is  that,  the  ulti- 


452  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

mate  and  fine  quality,  which  so  eminently  fits  for  his 
distinguished  place  your  honored  guest  of  to-night.  It 
is  helping  us  to  work  out  from  time  to  time,  as  they 
appear,  our  great  present  problems;  and,  fellow-citi 
zens,  fellow-Americans,  we  are  working  them  out.  For 
while  I  am  not  so  much  of  an  optimist  as  to  believe  that 
all  is  right  with  the  world,  neither  am  I  so  much  of  a 
pessimist  as  to  believe  that  all  is  wrong  with  the  world. 
I  am  rather  a  medianist.  How  can  I  be  otherwise?  I, 
who  profess  to  believe  in  a  government  of  God,  working 
in  and  among  the  nations  of  the  world.  Things  are 
getting  better.  This  is  a  better  nation,  with  better 
people  in  it  than  it  has  ever  seen  before.  The  fraud 
and  corruption  of  which  we  hear  so  much  to-day,  and 
which  the  press  flashes  upon  our  vision,  are  not  the 
rule,  but  the  exception.  It  is  that  that  makes  the  news. 
Like  the  story  I  have  heard  of  the  man  who  was  run 
ning  to  catch  the  boat,  and  seeing  it,  as  he  supposed, 
going  out  some  distance  from  the  shore,  made  a  tremen 
dous  leap  and  fell  sprawling  on  the  deck.  The  boat 
was  coming  in !  So  in  our  American  life  there  are  far 
more  good  people  than  bad;  far  more  honest  than  dis 
honest;  far  more  conscientious  men  seeking  and  striv 
ing  to  do  the  right  than  conscienceless;  far  more  pure 
and  true  than  false  and  untrue ;  and  the  number  is  in 
creasing,  the  boat  is  coming  in ! 


GEORGE  W.  WICKEESHAM 

(ATTORNEY-GENERAL  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  CHARLES  E.  HUGHES, 
NOVEMBER  19,  1910 

IN  nominating  to  the  Supreme  Bench  a  man  whom 
we  cannot  yet  think  of  except  as  Governor  Hughes, 
the  President  of  the  United  States  might  well  have 
said,  as  did  Washington  when  he  commissioned  John 
Jay  for  that  tribunal,  that  he  had  not  only  acted  ac 
cording  to  the  dictates  of  his  best  judgment,  but  that 
he  had  done  a  grateful  thing  to  the  people  of  the  United 
States. 

For  although  Justice  Field  maintained  that  the  Su 
preme  Court  is  the  most  democratic  feature  of  our 
government,  representing  as  it  does  the  whole  country, 
while  senators  represent  their  States  and  representa 
tives  their  constituents,  yet  the  manner  of  the  appoint 
ment  of  the  justices  and  the  nature  of  their  tenure  of 
office  are  such  that  they  are  removed  in  a  large  degree 
from  contact  with  the  mass  of  the  people.  When  the 
people  from  time  to  time  learn  that  the  Supreme  Court 
of  the  United  States  has  decided  that  a  certain  popular 
measure  of  Congress  is  void,  because  unconstitutional, 
or  that  some  law  much  desired  cannot  be  carried  out 
except  by  appeal  to  the  legislative  branch  of  the  gov 
ernment,  or  perhaps  that  it  cannot  be  accomplished  at 

453 


454  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

all,  because  of  some  constitutional  limitation,  they  are 
only  content  if  they  have  confidence  in  the  integrity 
and  learning  of  the  justices  of  the  Supreme  Court. 

The  appointment,  therefore,  at  this  time  of  a  strong, 
learned  man,  established  in  the  confidence  of  the  peo 
ple,  strengthens  immeasurably  the  position  of  the  Su 
preme  Court,  and  by  just  as  much  increases  its  power 
of  usefulness.  If,  as  Bacon  said,  "The  lawful  end  of 
ambition  is  the  power  to  do  good, ' '  Mr.  Justice  Hughes 
has  entered  upon  a  career  which  may  well  satisfy  that 
ambition.  For  what  greater  thing  can  any  man  accom 
plish  than  to  strengthen  the  hold  on  the  people  of  the 
independence  and  integrity  of  the  judiciary,  upon 
which  in  the  last  analysis  must  rest  the  perpetuity  of 
those  institutions  which  we  have  inherited  from  our 
fathers,  and  upon  which  depends  the  maintenance  of 
our  civilization. 

Every  foreign  student  of  our  institutions,  from  De 
Tocqueville  to  Bryce,  has  dwelt  with  special  admira 
tion  upon  the  establishment  of  the  judiciary  as  a  sepa 
rate  institution  and  a  coordinate  branch  of  our  govern 
ment,  protecting  the  legislative  from  the  assaults  of  the 
executive,  and  the  executive  from  the  aggression  of  the 
legislative.  The  fathers  of  our  country,  the  formula- 
tors  of  our  Constitution,  were  especially  careful  to 
provide  for  the  independence  of  the  judiciary,  rightly 
regarding  that  as  the  keystone  of  the  constitutional 
arch.  If  the  independence  of  the  judiciary  of  the 
United  States  shall  ever  be  impaired,  we  may  well 
tremble  for  the  perpetuity  of  republican  institutions. 

We  live  in  an  age  of  eager,  questioning  doubt,  an  age 
which  regards  no  principle  as  final,  which  seeks  to  sub- 


GEORGE  W.  WICKERSHAM  455 

ject  to  analysis  the  things  which  we  thought  were  ulti 
mate.  The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States,  as  the 
ultimate  arbiter  of  our  destinies,  may  be  called  upon  to 
analyze  principles  which  we  think  are  in  no  need  of 
analysis.  The  very  structure  of  our  whole  civilization 
may  once  more  be  subjected  to  the  liveliest  test  and 
analysis  of  judicial  investigation,  and  the  Supreme 
Court  of  the  nation  may  again  be  called  upon  to  de 
clare  in  no  uncertain  terms  that  no  man's  life,  liberty, 
or  property  shall  be  taken  save  by  the  judgment  of  his 
peers  or  the  law  of  the  land. 

These  are  some  of  the  avenues  of  usefulness  that 
open  before  Mr.  Justice  Hughes.  His  experience  in  the 
past  is  proof  to  us  that  in  his  judicial  career,  as  in  his 
executive,  he  will  be  guided  by  the  highest  motives, 
and  that  he  will  give  to  the  service  of  the  court  the 
same  earnest,  sincere  devotion  that  he  gave  to  the  direct 
service  of  the  people  in  executive  office. 


MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN 

AT  THE  DINNEE  TO  CHAELES  E.  HUGHES, 
NOVEMBEE  19,  1910 

NOTHING  could  be  more  agreeable  to  me  than  the 
surroundings  of  this  evening,  to  find  here  as 
sembled  the  members  of  a  club  with  which  I  have  been 
long  associated,  and  to  express  the  honor  and  gratifica 
tion  which  is  experienced  at  the  presence  of  a  distin 
guished  guest,  who  has  lately  been  honored  by  being 
made  an  associate  justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the 
United  States,  the  most  august  judicial  tribunal  in  this 
or  any  other  country.  And  the  occasion  is  furnished 
for  expressing,  through  him,  the  confidence  and  respect 
which  we  have  for  that  great  tribunal  and  the  judi 
ciary,  because  of  the  useful  and  self-sacrificing  work  in 
which  they  are  engaged,  in  one  of  the  highest  and  best 
of  human  activities. 

It  would  be  impossible  for  me  to  resist,  however,  in 
passing,  a  reference  to  the  personal  relations  which 
have  for  so  long  a  time  existed  between  myself  and  our 
distinguished  guest.  For  twenty  years  it  was  my  privi 
lege  to  sit  and  listen,  from  the  bench,  to  his  able 
advocacy  whilst  a  member  of  the  bar,  and  it  is  now  my 
time  to  express  the  hope  that,  whenever  I  am  fortunate 
enough  to  receive  a  retainer  to  appear  before  his  great 

456 


MORGAN  J.   O'BRIEN  457 

court,  he  will  listen  to  me  with  patience  and  be  recep 
tive  to  my  plea. 

It  is  one  of  the  incidents  of  our  democratic  form  of 
government  that  he  who  at  one  time  is  selected  as  a 
judge  to  listen  to  a  lawyer,  may  some"  day  find  himself 
sedulously  seeking  an  opportunity  to  present  his 
client's  cause  to  a  tribunal  of  which  the  former  lawyer 
is  a  member.  This  is  the  real  essence  and  the  charm  of 
democracy,  which  affords  the  opportunity  to  the  able 
and  gifted  to  rise  from  any  position  to  the  highest  in 
the  land,  and  verifies  the  biblical  saying  that  often  "the 
first  shall  be  last  and  the  last  first. ' ' 

From  a  distinguished  position  at  the  bar  our  guest 
has  had  a  rapid  and  remarkable  career,  which,  because 
founded  on  solid  qualities,  is  bound  to  be  safe  and  en 
during.  Called  from  the  bar  to  the  Governorship  of 
this  great  State  at  a  time  when  there  was  need  for  the 
greatest  courage  and  ability,  he  proved  equal  to  the 
occasion,  and  discharged  his  arduous  duties  in  a  man 
ner  that  won  the  commendation  of  all  who,  regardless 
of  politics,  believed  in  clean  policies  and  honest  ad 
ministration.  We  may  not  agree  with  all  his  insurgent 
views,  nor  with  what  some  of  us  would  regard  as  his 
perverted  policies.  It  is  unnecessary  to  commend  all 
the  measures  which  he  advocated,  and  with  which  his 
name  will  always  be  associated;  but  we  agree  that  in 
every  thought  and  act  he  was  moved  by  a  singleness  of 
purpose  to  promote  the  public  good,  and  the  measures 
which  he  proposed  and  the  policies  which  he  suggested 
were  the  emanations  of  a  sound  and  sane  mind  actuated 
by  an  honest  purpose  to  promote  those  things  which  he 
believed  to  be  right  and  true  and  good. 


458  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

And  it  is  because  of  the  ideals  and  standards  which 
he  set,  because  of  the  success  which  he  achieved  in 
promoting  them,  and  the  betterment  of  public  affairs 
which  he  accomplished,  that  in  his  public  career  he  has 
won  the  admiration  and  respect  of  our  citizens,  regard 
less  of  party.  In  the  battle  which  he  waged  he  was  a 
stimulating  leader  to  those  who  were  fighting  for  what 
was  right  and  true  in  our  governmental  system ;  and  in 
a  siege  which  was  short  but  decisive  he  has  won  his 
spurs.  He  has  now  been  removed  from  the  arena,  and 
is  no  longer  the  center  of  contending  forces ;  but,  away 
from  the  noise  and  struggle,  he  is  to  occupy  a  most  im 
portant  position,  that  of  arbiter  and  judge  with  respect 
to  great  questions  which  affect  our  common  weal.  The 
change  for  him,  no  doubt,  will  be  a  pleasant  one,  and 
for  the  American  people  a  most  hopeful  one.  In  reach 
ing  his  decision  to  put  aside  the  ambition,  which  he 
naturally  might  have  entertained,  of  being  one  day  the 
Chief  Magistrate  of  the  nation,  he  was  perhaps  in 
fluenced  by  the  sentiment  which  was  well  expressed  by 
Danton,  the  greatest  of  the  French  Jacobins,  and  one 
of  the  most  formidable  figures  in  modern  history,  who 
had  not  completed  his  thirty-fifth  year  when  he  went 
to  the  guillotine,  and  who  declared  it  better  to  live  a 
poor  fisherman  than  to  have  anything  to  do  with  the 
government  of  men. 

No  longer  concerned  with  the  government  of  men  in 
a  political  way,  he  is  called  upon  to  exercise  his  splen 
did  ability  and  talents  upon  what,  in  my  view,  is  a 
higher  plane  of  human  endeavor ;  and  from  our  know 
ledge  of  his  ability  and  worth,  we  have  little  doubt  of 
the  success  of  his  future  career. 


MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN  459 

Every  American  recognizes  the  Supreme  Court  of 
the  United  States  as  the  depository  and  expounder  of 
our  law  and  Constitution,  the  forum  which  has  been 
designed  to  deal,  in  the  last  resort,  with  questions  af 
fecting  life,  liberty,  and  property,  realizing  that  in  the 
voice  of  the  judiciary  we  obtain  the  final  expression  of 
that  which  we  must  and  do  accept  as  just  and  right. 
The  proper  discharge  of  judicial  duties  is  inseparably 
connected  with  individual  security  and  national  pros 
perity. 

"We  know  that  "the  life  of  a  nation,  like  the  life  of  a 
man,  may  be  prolonged  in  honor  to  the  fullness  of  its 
time,  or  it  may  perish  prematurely,  for  want  of  guid 
ance,  by  violence  or  internal  disorders/'  Kingdoms 
expire,  and  republics,  some  of  which  in  territorial  area 
were  larger  than  our  own,  some  of  which  attained  an 
intellectual  height  which  still  commands  the  admiration 
of  the  world,  have  glistened  along  the  past,  only  to  be 
extinguished  and  fade  as  utterly  as  the  vivid  glories  of 
sunset. 

Shall  our  country,  whose  glory  and  prosperity  are 
linked  with  every  fiber  of  our  hearts,  whose  founda 
tions  were  laid  so  deep  and  strong,  which,  through  the 
heroism  and  patriotism  of  our  fathers  and  the  great 
judges  of  the  past,  has  given  us  a  government  so  ad 
justed  as  to  satisfy  the  highest  and  noblest  ideals  of 
social  and  civil  life— shall  our  country,  through  our 
indifference  or  folly,  repeat  the  history  of  the  nations 
that  are  now  no  more  ?  It  is  axiomatic  that  true  liberty 
can  exist  and  continue  only  while  just  laws  are  enacted 
and  properly  administered.  In  a  free  state  there  must 
be  but  one  law  for  rich  and  poor,  and  that  law  must  be 


460  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

so  interpreted  and  administered  that  its  benefits,  re 
sponsibilities,  and  penalties  shall  apply  equally  to  all. 
I  shall  invite  no  dissent,  I  hope,  when  I  assert,  what  I 
firmly  believe,  that  the  progress  and  development  of 
man  are  more  closely  associated  with  our  own  country 
than  with  any  nation  under  the  sun.  In  the  struggle 
for  civil  and  religious  liberty,  in  the  effort  to  attain  a 
better  and  higher  civic  life,  we  have  here  the  last  and 
the  best  expression  of  the  yearnings  of  humanity, 
which  in  its  final  analysis  represents  a  government  of 
liberty  under  law. 

Solon,  that  great  lawgiver,  said  that  "it  is  of  the 
essence  of  democracy  that  it  should  recognize  no  mas 
ter  except  the  law."  This  principle  of  the  supremacy 
of  the  law  is  the  distinguished  characteristic  of  our 
country,  and  let  us  never  forget  that  one  great  prin 
ciple  has  more  influence  upon  the  progress  and  destiny 
of  a  nation  than  all  its  territory  and  wealth.  We  have 
had  a  national  career  of  unexampled  greatness  and 
splendor;  but  the  marvelous  development,  during  re 
cent  years,  of  our  national  resources,  combined  with 
the  great  increase  and  unequal  distribution  of  wealth, 
has  produced  difficult  problems  which  require  for  their 
solution  the  broadest  statesmanship  and  the  largest 
patriotism. 

In  the  midst  of  our  great  national  prosperity,  how 
ever,  we  could  not,  if  we  would,  fail  to  observe  those 
dark  and  ominous  clouds  which  hover  over  our  national 
firmament,  which  are  the  inevitable  forerunners  of  a 
violent  storm.  Such  a  storm  may  accomplish  good  or 
bad,  may  be  increased  or  diminished  according  to  the 
manner  in  which  it  is  met  and  directed.  If  the  now 


MORGAN  J.   O'BRIEN  461 

smouldering  embers  are  to  be  fed  into  a  living  flame, 
the  end  no  man  can  foretell.  If  advantage  is  taken  of 
present  conditions  to  direct  the  current  into  safe  and 
patriotic  channels,  then,  instead  of  evil,  good  will  flow. 
Hence  the  burden  which  rests  in  a  special  manner  upon 
our  judiciary  to  see  to  it  that  from  prevailing  condi 
tions  there  shall  result  good  instead  of  evil.  To  accom 
plish  this,  nothing  is  more  needful  than  respect  for 
law  and  for  the  judges,  for  they  are  powerless  unless 
supported  by  an  enlightened  public  sentiment.  We  are 
passing  through  a  period  when  the  nation,  stirred  to  its 
depths,  is  wrestling  with  great  problems,  social,  in 
dustrial,  and  political.  We  are  in  the  throes  of  one  of 
the  great  eras  of  unrest,  when  former  conditions  will  no 
longer  be  tolerated;  and  this  spirit  and  temper  rules 
throughout  the  world,  and  in  no  place  more  actively 
than  in  our  own  country,  wherein  is  being  fought  a 
tremendous  battle,  involving  not  only  social  and  indus 
trial  and  political  conditions  and  principles,  but  our 
whole  framework  of  government. 

It  is  not  my  purpose  to  attempt  to  assign  the  reasons 
or  influences  which  have  accentuated  the  rapid  and 
restless  movements  of  our  national  life,  but  there  is  one 
upon  which  it  may  be  profitable  to  dwell  for  a  moment 
to-night :  the  evils  that  would  follow  if  we  should  cease 
to  trust  and  revere  our  Constitution  and  law  and 
judges.  The  pessimists  tell  us  that  our  institutions  will 
be  unable  to  cope  successfully  with  the  new  govern 
mental  conditions.  Foreigners  tell  us  that  we  are  a 
nation  of  money-grabbers,  and  that  we  have  no  ideals 
of  public  life  or  service  other  than  the  idolatrous  wor 
ship  of  the  golden  calf.  We  are  told  that  our  plutoc- 


462  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

racy  is  as  heartless  and  unfeeling  as  our  democracy  is 
corrupted  by  envy,  hatred,  and  malice;  that  in  the 
consideration  of  great  public  questions,  involving  the 
interests  of  the  whole  country,  our  statesmen  are 
unable  to  rise  above  the  selfish  dictates  of  sectionalism, 
and  that  we  are  losing  our  interest  in  religion  and  in 
all  the  high  standards  and  ideals  upon  which  the  future 
of  man  depends.  To  some  of  our  fellow-citizens  every 
partnership  spells  plunder;  every  corporation,  corrup 
tion;  every  effort,  evasion;  and  every  inspiration,  in 
sincerity.  We  are  told  that  capital  tries  to  enslave 
labor,  and  that  labor  is  prepared  to  fly  at  the  throat  of 
capital;  that  a  nation  which  the  struggle  over  slavery 
could  not  dismember  is  to  be  destroyed  because  the 
material  interests  of  one  section  will  be  shown  to  be 
adverse  to  those  of  another;  that  we  are  becoming 
materialists,  and  that  with  the  loss  of  faith  and  the 
standards  of  conduct  inherited  from  our  fathers,  a 
republic  based  upon  the  consent  of  the  governed  and 
the  rule  of  the  majority  cannot  long  endure. 

I  dissent  from  these  pessimistic  views.  There  is  no 
country  in  the  world  where  the  struggle  for  the  lives 
and  the  betterment  of  others  is  proceeding  more  earn 
estly  and  successfully  than  in  our  own.  Compare  the 
present  attitude  of  the  rest  of  the  world  towards  slav 
ery,  war,  woman,  the  weak,  the  sick,  and  the  aged,  with 
our  own  attitude.  Consider  the  gifts  which  have  been 
made  for  educational  and  eleemosynary  purposes  in  the 
United  States  during  the  past  decade.  We  do  not  hear 
very  much  now  about  patriotism,  because  the  pessimists 
have  failed  to  impress  the  country  that  our  national  life 
is  seriously  menaced.  There  is  in  the  hearts  of  the 


MORGAN  J.  O'BRIEN  463 

American  people  to-day  as  controlling  a  love  of  country 
as  there  ever  was ;  and  if  the  occasion  arises  when  this 
fact  must  be  demonstrated  by  action,  there  will  be  the 
same  generous  outpouring  of  money  and  blood  as  was 
produced  by  our  early  struggle  with  England  or  by  the 
later  War  of  the  Rebellion. 

We  know  that  patriotism  is  not  dead,  and  that  when 
the  patriotic  spirit  is  invoked  it  will  rise  superior  to 
parties  or  partisanship.  The  hopeful  patriot  and  the 
intelligent  citizen  knows  and  feels  that  the  evils  which 
threaten  our  country,  because  of  social  inequalities, 
questions  between  capital  and  labor,  and  all  the  other 
great  questions  needing  solution,  can  be  solved  by  our 
judges  in  some  way  consistent  with  vested  rights,  in 
some  way  consistent  with  the  rights  of  property,  in 
some  way  consistent  with  the  preservation  of  the  law 
and  the  Constitution,  upon  which  rest  our  peace,  our 
liberty,  and  our  happiness.  The  settlement  of  such 
questions,  subject  to  legislation,  must  be  left  to  our 
courts.  The  judiciary  is  the  living  voice  of  the  Consti 
tution,  made  up  of  men  who,  away  from  the  busy  marts 
of  enterprise,  removed  from  the  blinding  and  bewil 
dering  struggle  for  wealth,  are  able  to  give  that  study, 
care,  and  attention  essential  to  the  determination  of 
those  great  questions,  upon  the  right  solution  of  which 
so  much  of  individual  liberty  and  national  prosperity 
depends. 

Such  close  association  as  our  honored  guest,  in  his 
new  and  exalted  station,  will  have  with  all  that  is  high 
est  and  best  was  eloquently  expressed  by  Webster  : 

"  Justice,  sir,  is  the  greatest  interest  of  man  on  earth. 
It  is  the  ligament  which  holds  civilized  beings  and 


464:  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

nations  together.  Wherever  her  temple  stands,  and  so 
long  as  it  is  duly  honored,  there  is  foundation  for  social 
security,  general  happiness,  and  the  improvement  and 
progress  of  our  race.  And  whoever  labors  on  this  edi 
fice  with  usefulness  and  distinction ;  whoever  clears  its 
foundations,  strengthens  its  pillars,  adorns  its  entabla 
tures,  or  contributes  to  raise  its  august  dome  still 
higher  to  the  skies,  connects  himself  in  name  and  fame 
with  that  which  is  and  must  be  as  durable  as  the  frame 
of  human  society." 


FRANK  E.  LAWRENCE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JULES  J.  JUSSERAND, 
DECEMBER  2,  1910 

ENTLEMEN  of  the  Lotos  Club :  One  of  the  prin- 
cipal  purposes  of  this  club,  as  declared  in  its  con 
stitution,  is  to  encourage  social  intercourse  among 
representatives,  amateurs,  and  friends  of  literature, 
science,  and  the  fine  arts.  Sometimes  we  take  excur 
sions  into  other  fields — anywhere,  wherever  you  please, 
from  polar  exploration  to  public  life;  but  it  is  always 
delightful,  it  always  seems  like  coming  back  home,  to 
return  to  the  things  that  are  nearest  and  dearest  to  our 
hearts.  And  what  is  there  that  we  love  more,  what 
friends  have  we  more  faithful,  more  constant,  than  our 
pictures  and  our  books  ? 

"When  we  come  together  to  receive  a  guest  who  is 
foremost  in  the  world  of  diplomacy,  and  who  occupies 
an  equally  foremost  place  in  the  world  of  letters,  this 
club  is  doubly  fortunate ;  and  such  is  its  happy  position 
to-night.  We  assemble  to  receive  His  Excellency  the 
Ambassador  of  the  Republic  of  France.  How  can  we 
ever  say  enough  in  praise  of  the  country  which  sends  us 
so  distinguished  a  guest?  We  know  its  history,  its 
literature,  its  art,  its  fine  traditions;  and  to  those  of 
us  who  have  been  privileged  to  spend  a  time  in  that 
beautiful  country  and  learn  something  of  its  fair 

465 


466  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

women  and  brave  men,  France  must  ever  be  enshrined 
within  our  hearts  as  "the  land  of  sunshine  and  of 
song. ' ' 

Americans  are  bound  to  that  great  and  powerful 
nation  by  an  ancient  and  peculiar  tie,  for  it  can  never 
be  forgotten  that  when  the  few  American  colonies  were 
struggling  for  their  lives,  France  was  our  earliest  and 
greatest  friend,  sending  us  Lafayette  and  many  more, 
the  flower  of  her  youth  and  chivalry. 

When  we  were  weak  and  feeble,  France  sent  us  of  her 
best.  Now  that  the  United  States  is  great  and  strong 
and  fit  to  cope  with  any  nation,  France  sends  us  of  her 
best.  Benjamin  Franklin,  our  great  philosopher,  was 
the  first  Minister  of  the  United  States  to  France ;  and 
when  we  of  the  Lotos  Club  assemble  to  receive  His  Ex 
cellency  the  French  Ambassador,  it  would  be  unseemly 
did  we  forget  that  our  former  president,  Whitelaw 
Reid,  resigned  his  office  to  go  abroad  as  Minister  to 
France,  while  our  old  comrade  Horace  Porter,  long 
your  vice-president,  (who  is  kept  away  to-night  only  by 
uncontrollable  circumstances),  has  only  lately  been  our 
Ambassador  to  the  Republic  of  France.  There  are  thus 
more  than  ordinary  ties  which  attract  this  club  toward 
the  great  nation  represented  in  the  person  of  its  Am 
bassador  here  to-night. 

But,  apart  from  his  great  position  in  the  world  of 
diplomacy,  there  are  sympathies  which  draw  us  more 
closely  to  His  Excellency  M.  Jusserand.  It  is  as  a  man 
of  letters  that  he  appeals  to  us  most  closely  and  touches 
most  nearly  our  hearts.  "We  recall  that,  although  a 
native  of  a  country  which  has  a  literature  of  its  own 
which  is  unsurpassed  in  all  the  world,  he  has  yet  delved 


FRANK  R.  LAWRENCE  467 

into  the  literature  of  a  foreign  country,  to  a  degree 
unsurpassed  by  any  English  or  American  scholar.  I 
need  but  remind  you  of  his  ''English  Essays  from  a 
French  Pen/'  a  work  as  delightful  as  any  of  its  kind 
which  has  proceeded  from  any  American  or  English 
author.  His  ' '  Literary  History  of  the  English  People ' ' 
has  laid  us  under  a  lasting  debt  of  gratitude ;  and  that 
charming  work  which  he  has  been  pleased  to  call  "The 
English  Novel  in  the  Time  of  Shakespeare"  is  a  book 
without  which  no  library  of  English  literature  is  com 
plete,  for  in  it  he  perpetuates  the  names  and  the  works 
of  early  English  novelists  whom  their  countrymen  were 
allowing  to  become  forgotten. 

Gentlemen,  all  honor  to  His  Excellency  M.  Jusse- 
rand,  all  gratitude  to  the  country  which  sends  us  such 
a  representative!  I  give  you  a  double  toast,  "The 
pleasant  land  of  France/'  and  its  illustrious  Ambas 
sador,  His  Excellency  M.  Jusserand,  a  master-crafts 
man  both  in  diplomacy  and  in  literature. 


JULES  J.  JUSSEBAND 

(AMBASSADOR  OF  FRANCE) 

AT  THE  DINNEE  IN  HIS  HONOE,  DECEMBEE  2,  1910 

I  CANNOT  well  say  how  deeply  touched  I  am  by  your 
friendly  reception,  and  by  the  charming  way  in 
which  your  president  has  proposed  the  prosperity  of 
my  country  and  my  health.  I  have  heard  that  your 
president  is  one  of  the  lights  of  the  law,  but  I  find 
that  this  is  probably  a  mistake,  and  that  in  this  club, 
where  he  speaks  so  well  of  art  and  literature,  he  ap 
parently  belongs  especially  to  art,  and  is  a  portrait- 
painter. 

Looking  at  this  particular  portrait  of  me  [holding 
the  menu  in  his  hand],  may  not  I  wish  I  were  this 
young  gentleman?  I  was  like  this  when  I  came  here, 
but  that  is  a  great  many  years  ago.  I  think  I  beat  the 
record  of  all  my  French  predecessors  in  Washington. 
My  first  notion  of  America  dates  back  a  very  long  time. 
It  was  in  my  father's  house  in  the  country,  where  his 
library,  as  the  library  of  an  honest  French  gentleman 
living  in  the  country,  consisted  only  of  the  classics. 
The  library  is  still  there,  with  the  same  books,  well 
bound— Holier e,  Rousseau,  Voltaire,  La  Fontaine,  and 
all  the  various  men  of  mark;  yet  there  were  very  few 
foreign  books  in  my  father's  library,  very  few:  but  we 
did  have  the  works  of  Fenimore  Cooper,  complete. 

468 


JULES  J.  JUSSERAND  469 

There  was  a  double  row  of  Walter  Scott,  bound  in 
yellow,  and  Fenimore  Cooper,  bound  in  blue.  And  it 
was  through  those  books  bound  in  blue  that  I  first 
knew  Cooper's  "Deerslayer"  and  the  rest  of  the 
"Leatherstocking  Tales,"  and  I  got  my  first  inkling  of 
a  country  which  I  never  expected  I  should  see.  The 
vogue  of  Cooper  in  France  is  something  extraordinary. 
My  father's  library  was  like  any  other  Frenchman's 
library.  There  is  n't  one  in  France  where  you  will  not 
see  Fenimore  Cooper,  complete.  I  might  mention  that 
when  they  came  abroad,  the  works  of  Fenimore  Cooper 
created  a  sensation  that  was  unspeakable,  and  one  of 
our  best  critics  put  it  very  clearly  in  memorable  words. 
He  said:  "The  astonishment  to  see  that  wonderful 
literature  come  from  that  remote  land  of  Indians  and 
fighters,  was  so  great  that  nothing  can  better  be  com 
pared  with  it  than  the  astonishment  of  Robinson  Crusoe 
when  he  found  the  footprints  on  the  sand  of  his  desert 
island." 

And  then  it  was  my  fate,  my  happiness,  to  be  ap 
pointed  ambassador  here.  I  had  traveled  very  much, 
but  I  had  never -been  in  America.  I  must  say  that  my 
impression  was  *very  deep,  by  which  I  don't  mean  that 
I  consider  the  skyscraper  is  as  beautiful  as  the  Louvre, 
but  I  mean  that  when  you  go  to  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  at 
sunset  and  look  towards  New  York  and  see  the  immen 
sity  of  Babylonian  buildings,  with  the  smoke  going  up 
into  the  sky  and  a  red  sunset  behind,  you  see  a  thing 
that  is  unique  in  the  world,  one  of  the  great  sights  of 
this  round  ball. 

One  of  our  poets,  Jean  Doublet,  has  written  a  sonnet 
which  begins  thus:  "Hope  like  Ulysses's  first  marked 


470  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

this  voyage";  and  then  he  goes  on  to  describe  his  own 
feelings  (he  himself  was  abroad  in  the  diplomatic  ser 
vice,  having  an  office  in  Persia),  and  he  tells  something 
of  his  principal  wish,  of  knowing  it  as  it  was  then 
and  in  the  past. 

The  day  to  go  back  to  my  native  house,  my  father's 
house,  will  come  one  day.  I  hope  it  will  not  come 
as  soon  as  I  see  now  and  then  in  the  papers.  But 
the  day  will  come  when  I  shall  have  to  return  to 
that  house,  and  find  myself  again  with  the  yellow 
Walter  Scott  and  the  blue  Fenimore  Cooper.  I  shall 
then  have  time  to  think  of  what  took  place,  and  have 
to  consider  what  happened  to  me  in  America.  So  I  am 
not  going,  I  hope,  for  a  long  time,  as  I  have  been  here 
a  great  many  years ;  but  I  can  already  guess  what  will 
be  the  things  which  will  be  uppermost  in  my  mind  in 
my  old  age  in  that  quiet  spot  where  my  parents  used  to 
live.  One  of  the  things  will  be  my  official  life  in  Wash 
ington.  I  don't  think  it  is  possible  for  any  one  to  find 
a  more  hospitable,  a  more  charming  social  welcome 
than  it  has  been  my  privilege  to  find  in  your  Federal 
City.  I  found  it  in  the  White  House,  both  with  the 
former  and  with  the  present  President,  and  with  their 
secretaries  of  state.  I  shall  name  no  names,  but  they 
were  President  Roosevelt  and  President  Taft.  And  the 
same  with  their  secretaries. 

The  feeling  I  have  in  Washington  I  have  had 
throughout  the  country.  My  impression  of  the  nation 
grew  as  I  knew  it  better.  I  began  to  know  it,  like 
Ulysses,  by  traveling.  I  went  around,  and  I  think 
there  are  very  few  States  which  I  have  n't  visited,  and 
very  few  cities.  And  I  have  admired  their  character- 


JULES  J.  JUSSERAND  471 

istics,  for  there  are  as  many  brands  of  Americans  as 
there  are  brands  of  good  wine  in  France.  Boston, 
Chicago,  St.  Paul,  even  San  Francisco.  Last  year  I 
roamed  with  my  wife  for  thirty-five  days  on  the  road, 
sleeping  in  our  car,  visiting  the  country  constantly; 
and,  as  I  have  said  before,  my  admiration  was  very 
great,  because  in  the  West  it  is  very  difficult  to  decide 
which  is  the  more  wonderful  of  those  wonders  of  nature 
which  you  have,  and  which  you  have  in  nearness  to  the 
lines  of  the  railroad,  and  the  works  of  man.  There  is 
nothing  to  be  compared  with  the  Grand  Canon  of 
Arizona,  which  in  parts  has  a  depth  which  seems  to  lead 
to  the  nether  regions,  and  wonders  of  coloring  that  re 
mind  you  of  the  other  extreme.  Then  take  what  man 
has  done.  American  energy  has  succeeded,  to  my  mind, 
in  doing  something  which  surpasses  even  the  natural 
beauty.  I  have  seen  immense  fields  of  sage  which 
would  be  incapable  of  yielding  food  to  any  being  of 
any  kind ;  but  the  American  engineer  comes,  and,  with 
a  magic  wand  like  that  of  Moses,  causes  water  to  flow 
amidst  the  fields,  and  there  come  the  city  and  agricul 
tural  wealth  and  enjoyable  life. 

When  a  celebrated  inventor  was  about  to  die,  he  wrote 
one  last  essay,  in  which  he  considered  what  would  be 
the  inventions  which  were  most  useful  to  all  mankind. 
And  he  mentioned  one  or  two,  and  he  said,  "There  is 
one  which  perhaps  will  be  made,  perhaps  not  for  years 
—I  don't  know— and  perhaps  to-morrow;  that  is,  the 
possibility  of  using  the  air  as  a  means  of  transporta 
tion";  and  he  added,  "When  that  invention  is  made, 
mankind  will  be  changed  more  than  by  any  other  inven 
tion  that  went  before— even  than  gunpowder,  or  print- 


472  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ing,  or  any  other;  for  this  simple  reason,"  he  said, 
''there  will  be  no  frontiers."  There  is  no  doubt  that 
when  this  happens  it  will  be  a  very  sad  day  for  a  friend 
of  ours,  the  collector  of  customs  in  New  York.  No  fron 
tiers,  no  customs,  no  officers— what  a  colossal  change! 
And  among  other  changes  which  are  to  come,  that  in 
vention  will  certainly  transform  the  world,  to  para 
phrase  the  saying  of  one  of  your  great  sages,  Benjamin 
Franklin,  one  to  whom  your  president  alluded.  He  was 
present  at  the  birth  of  the  first  engine  that  went  up  in 
the  air,  which  practically  was  a  French  invention,  and 
it  went  up  in  the  year  of  American  independence,  1783. 
Some  one  said  to  Franklin,  ' '  You  can  master  the  air,  but 
what  is  the  good  of  it  ? ' '  And  Franklin  said,  < '  What  is 
the  good  of  a  new-born  babe  ? ' '  And  so  it  is.  Immense 
changes  will  take  place— changes,  I  am  sure,  altogether 
good. 

Your  president  recalled  that  we  have  been  your 
friends  in  war.  I  assure  you  we  are  very  willing  to  be 
your  friends  in  peace.  And  if  ever  some  of  you  want 
to  go  to  the  ficole  des  Beaux  Arts,  I  am  sure  you  will 
find  a  hearty  welcome.  One  thing  I  shall  remember 
above  all,  and  that  is,  wherever  I  have  been  in  America, 
I  have  found  something  reminding  me  of  my  country, 
in  terms  that  warmed  my  heart.  Wherever  I  went 
from  city  to  city,  I  have  been  received  by  associations 
like  the  Cincinnati,  the  Sons  of  the  Revolution;  and 
whether  founded  to  preserve  the  old  traditions,  or,  like 
this  club,  for  social  purposes,  I  have  found  the  old  feel 
ing  still  alive,  and  it  has  warmed  my  heart. 

When  that  same  Ulysses  mentioned  by  our  great  poet, 
Doublet,  was  among  you— for  he  was  among  the  Lotos- 


JULES  J.  JUSSERAND  473 

eaters— he  said  to  be  with  them  was  exceedingly  dan 
gerous,  because  when  you  had  dined  with  the  Lotos- 
eaters  you  forgot  your  own  country. 

My  impression,  since  I  have  been  in  America,  and 
now  that  I  am  among  you  who  have  treated  me  in  such 
a  French  way,  is  that  it  is  very  difficult— indeed,  impos 
sible—in  America  to  forget  that  friend  of  the  United 
States— France. 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JULES  J.  JUSSEKAND, 
DECEMBEE  2,  1910 

YOU  remember,  Mr.  Ambassador,  that  delightful 
French  proverb  to  the  effect  that  a  man  has  three 
chances  at  a  dinner,  one  on  his  right,  one  on  his  left, 
and  the  company.  And  you  have  discovered,  sir,  that 
at  the  Lotos  a  man  has  every  chance.  When  Mr.  Law 
rence  began  to  enumerate  the  ambassadorial  connec 
tions  of  the  Lotos  Club,  I  began  to  feel  that  this  was 
really  a  reception  by  ambassadors  to  an  ambassador. 

I  wonder,  gentlemen,  if  you  realize  that,  in  addition 
to  all  the  other  perplexities  which  beset  an  ambassador 
in  this  country,  there  is  one  which  falls  with  great 
weight  on  the  French  ambassador,  and  it  is  the  matter 
of  his  name.  Now,  we  can  get  along  with  Von  Rosen 
and  Sternberg  or  Bernstorff  among  other  names,  but  I 
had  the  pleasure,  a  year  ago  last  summer,  to  make  an 
excursion  on  Lake  Champlain  with  the  ambassador, 
who  spoke  both  in  Champlain 's  tongue  and  in  English 
on  at  least  half-a-dozen  occasions.  On  every  occasion 
he  was  introduced  by  a  different  name.  Sometimes  he 
was  "Mr.  Jusserand,"  and  sometimes  "Mr.  Jusserau"; 
and  I  suggested  to  him  that  if  he  felt  like  going  to  ex 
tremes,  he  had  just  cause  for  war. 

There  is  a  story  that  a  New  York  lady  some  time  ago 

474 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE  475 

asked  a  Boston  lady  what  was  the  real  pronunciation 
of  the  word  " Boston "  in  Boston,  and  she  said,  "You 
must  pronounce  the  V  softly,  as  in  the  word  'God.'  " 
Now,  that  first  "u"— I  won't  tire  you  with  my  primi 
tive  attempts  at  using  the  French  language,  which  on 
all  foreign  occasions  give  my  family  unending  joy  and 
humiliation  as  well.  And  I  won't  try  to  suggest  the 
proper  pronunciation,  but  I  suppose  it  is  a  little  touch 
of  the  "u"  in  justice,  which  might  be  associated  with 
the  ambassador.  We  understand  the  French,  if  we 
don't  always  correctly  speak  their  language;  and  we 
have  in  that  respect  a  great  advantage  over  other 
nations. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  of  those  speeches  on  Lake 
Champlain  was  that  delivered  at  Plattsburg.  It  has 
always  been  a  great  question  as  to  which  State  was  dis 
covered  first — Vermont  or  New  York.  And  what  did 
he  say  ?  He  said,  in  describing  the  march  of  Champlain 
down  through  the  valley  woods,  that  when  he  reached 
the  lake  he  looked  up  and  saw  in  the  same  glance  New 
York  and  Vermont !  But  what  was  interesting  that  day 
and  very  characteristic  was  the  fact  that  to  the  fifteen 
thousand  people  assembled  there,  of  both  races,  English 
and  French  (for  the  French  had  come  in  great  numbers 
away  from  over  the  Canadian  border),  he  spoke  first 
rapidly  for  ten  minutes  in  English,  and  then  in  French, 
to  the  intense  satisfaction  of  the  French  audience,  who 
were  delighted  to  hear  their  own  tongue  spoken  again 
in  a  foreign  country. 

He  has  always  been  not  only  an  eloquent  speaker  in 
two  languages,  but  an  interpreter  of  two  literatures ;  he 
has  been  an  ambassador,  a  toiler  rather,  in  that  higher 


476  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

ground  whose  real  business  in  the  world  has  been  to 
interpret  the  spiritual  and  the  intellectual  to  the  final 
analysis.  He  has  spoken  of  Brander  Matthews 's  ad 
mirable  life  of  Moliere.  He  has  spoken  of  the  French 
influence  in  England  during  the  time  of  Shakespeare. 
Why,  if  any  one  were  to  attempt  to  write  the  history  of 
French  influence  on  English  literature,  he  would  do 
precisely  what  the  ambassador  has  done,  he  would  write 
the  history  of  English  literature. 

Only  last  week  John  H.  Finley,  president  of  the  Col 
lege  of  the  City  of  New  York,  and  one  of  the  best  fel 
lows  that  ever  lived,  spoke  of  the  earliest  contact  of 
France  with  America  as  the  most  romantic  story  in  the 
history  of  the  known  world.  I  have  no  doubt  that 
many  of  you  have  looked  down  from  the  citadel  of 
Quebec  on  that  magnificent  panorama,  and  have  in 
imagination  recalled  the  figures  of  those  early  French 
men  who  came  across  that  perilous,  mysterious  sea  in 
their  little  yawls— the  soldiers,  sailors,  merchants,  and 
priests— and  passed  up  that  great  river  along  that 
wonderful  gulf,  and  in  a  long  period  of  years  made 
their  way  across  intervening  space  to  Niagara  and  the 
Great  Lakes,  across  the  prairies  to  the  source  of  the 
Mississippi,  and  through  the  heart  of  the  unknown  con 
tinent,  and  passed  down  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico. 

I  don't  think  it  is  far  out  of  the  way  to  say  that 
wherever  the  Frenchman  has  touched  this  continent,  he 
has  left  the  impress  of  his  chivalry,  courtesy,  and 
charm  of  manner.  That  is  true  at  Detroit,  St.  Louis, 
and  wherever  a  trace  of  the  old  French  is  still  found. 
It  is  a  long  story  connected  with  our  continent  that  tells 
of  the  ruggedness  of  adventure,  and  the  skill  and  hero- 


HAMILTON  W.  MABIE  477 

ism.  They  did  n't  care  what  happened  as  long  as  they 
did  their  work  associated  with  that  triumphal  progress 
of  France  up  the  great  river  and  across  the  Great  Lakes 
and  down  that  other  great  river  of  the  continent. 

Then  go  down,  if  you  please,  to  Charleston  and  stand 
on  the  hill  there,  overlooking  that  peaceful  bay  dotted 
with  little  islands,  and  remember  the  Frenchmen  who 
came  there  in  the  early  days,  the  Huguenots,  the  Puri 
tans  of  the  South,  bringing  with  them  the  refinements 
of  social  life  and  charm  of  hospitality  and  courtesy  of 
manner  which  have  survived  in  American  Charleston 
to-day.  And  then  recall  as  you  stand  there,  and  visit 
the  cathedral  there,  the  old  cathedral,  which  was  the 
first  church  in  America  where  all  might  worship  in 
their  own  way,  and  that  France  gave  to  us. 

Yes,  all  this  France  has  given  us,  and  far  more  too. 
It  is  too  late  in  the  evening  and  too  early  in  time  to 
speak  of  our  indebtedness  to  France,  of  what  France 
has  done  for  us.  Other  ambassadors  have  represented 
their  own  country ;  this  ambassador  has  done  something 
different.  He  has  interpreted  us  to  France  and  to  our 
selves.  He  has  told  the  story  of  English  genius  in 
literature  with  the  same  fidelity  and  the  same  sense  of 
life,  with  all  its  intimate  touches  of  English  char 
acter.  If  you  want  to  know  English  intimately,  read 
his  "Wayfaring  Life."  If  you  want  to  know  the 
romance  and  sentiment  of  Shakespeare's  time,  read  his 
interpretation  or  account  of  the  individual  of  that  day. 
If,  above  all,  you  want  to  see  the  whole  movement  and 
spirit  of  England  expressed  through  its  greatest  tongue, 
read  the  "Literary  History  of  the  English  People." 

Do  you  remember  how  charmingly  it  ends— rather, 


478  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

the  account  of  Shakespeare  ends  ?  The  author  of  this  is 
one  whose  name  we  will  not  mention,  because  every 
time  it  has  been  spoken  it  has  brought  a  blush  to  his 
cheek.  I  was  speaking  to-day  with  one  of  the  gentlemen 
with  whom  the  ambassador  has  been  very  intimately 
related  in  his  official  life,  and  I  said,  "What  is  his 
prime  characteristic  ? ' '  And  he  said,  ' l  This :  that  with 
perfect  loyalty  to  his  own  country  and  always  urging 
its  cause  with  unvarying  patience  and  ardor,  he  is 
never  otherwise  than  persona  grata  to  the  government 
to  which  he  addresses  himself. ' ' 


CHARLEMAGNE  TOWER 

(LATE  AMBASSADOR  TO  GERMANY) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JULES  J.  JUSSEEAND, 
DECEMBER  2,  1910 

FT1HE  presence  of  M.  Jusserand  recalls,  I  am  sure, 
JL  many  agreeable  remembrances  to  us  all.  For  I  think 
that  every  one  of  us,  at  some  point  in  his  experience, 
has  come  under  the  charm  of  France  and  French  life, 
from  which  he  has  brought  back  lasting  impressions. 
The  American  has  never  failed  to  respond  to  it — I 
think,  perhaps,  more  readily  than  almost  any  other 
stranger.  Indeed,  our  relations  of  friendship  with 
France  reach  back  to  the  very  beginning  of  our  exis 
tence  as  an  independent  nation.  As  your  president  has 
well  said,  it  has  been  impressed  upon  our  hearts  since 
earliest  infancy,  for  our  first  diplomatic  negotiations 
took  place  in  the  cabinet  of  the  great  foreign  minister 
of  Louis  XVI,  when  our  representatives,  announcing 
themselves  with  the  remark  that  they  were  not  much 
accustomed  to  the  usages  of  courts,  came  to  plead  the 
cause  of  the  infant  nation  that  had  just  sprung  into  life 
beyond  the  sea.  The  result  of  it  was  that  French 
soldiers  carried  the  French  flag  along  the  banks  of  the 
Hudson  River  and  the  James,  under  the  command  of 
General  Washington,  and  that  we  have  written  upon 
that  page  of  our  history  such  names  as  Rochambean, 

479 


480  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

Lafayette,  and  De  Grasse;  and  it  is  a  pleasure  to 
welcome  the  honored  guest  of  the  evening,  and  to  recall 
the  fact  that  through  the  passage  of  more  than  one 
hundred  years  since,  those  friendly  relations  have 
never  been  changed. 

Methods  have  changed.  The  old  diplomacy  is  gone. 
The  man  whose  reputation  for  truth  suffered  more  than 
he  really  deserved,  the  man  who  was  believed  to  speak 
the  truth  diplomatically,  who  was  supposed  to  be 
steeped  in  intrigue  and,  under  the  guise  of  a  friend,  to 
be  an  enemy  at  heart,  and  always  a  stranger,  has  de 
parted.  The  ambassador  of  to-day  occupies  a  different 
position.  He  is  upon  a  much  higher  plane  as  a  states 
man  and  a  man  of  the  world.  A  very  striking  example 
of  this  is  the  ambassador  of  France,  who,  during  his 
mission  of  eight  years  in  our  country,  has  so  maintained 
the  interests  of  his  own  government,  and  has  made  such 
a  place  among  us,  that  we  are  happy,  upon  a  purely 
social  occasion  like  this,  to  come  here  and  express  to 
him  our  high  consideration  and  personal  respect. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  diplomacy  and  interna 
tional  law,  the  attitude  of  nations  in  their  dealings  with 
each  other  marks  very  strongly  the  progress  of  civiliza 
tion.  Browning  has  said  that  the  most  stubborn  ad 
versaries  can  discover  points  of  similarity  between 
them,  if  they  will,  and  this  happily  is  what  is  going  on 
to-day.  For  the  countries  of  the  world  are  not  only 
being  drawn  closer  to  each  other  by  the  triumph  of 
modern  science,  as  a  result  of  which  a  steamship  may 
cross  the  Atlantic  Ocean  in  five  days  or  six,  but  the 
bridge  is  also  made  by  that  great  common  interest  which 
is  found  among  men  of  every  race,  to  protect  the 


CHARLEMAGNE   TOWER  481 

rights  and  property  of  others  and  recognize  the  obliga 
tions  of  law  and  maintain  the  peace  of  the  world. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  minds  of  leading 
statesmen  are  turned  in  this  direction— in  the  direction 
of  compassing  the  difficulties  of  making  men  less  ready 
to  draw  the  sword. 

The  boast  of  the  great  armaments  of  to-day  is  that 
they  are  the  truest  guarantee  of  peace;  and  so  indeed 
they  are,  but  it  is  a  peace  imposed  by  force  or  by  the 
fear  of  force.  May  we  not  look  forward  to  the  day 
when  the  peace  of  nations  will  be  held  secure  because  it 
will  be  based  upon  judgment  and  equity  and  reason? 
A  great  step  ahead  was  made  in  the  erection  of  the 
tribunal  at  The  Hague,  and  the  establishment  of  the 
principle  of  arbitration  for  the  settlement  of  interna 
tional  disputes,  to  which  more  than  forty  independent 
states  have  announced  their  adherence;  among  them 
the  sister  republics  of  the  United  States  of  America  and 
France. 

We  ourselves  have  submitted  to  its  consideration  dur 
ing  the  past  summer  a  series  of  the  most  complex  and 
difficult  questions  upon  which  we  have  been  in  differ 
ence  with  Great  Britain  for  upwards  of  a  century.  We 
have  accepted  its  decision,  as  has  also  our  magnanimous 
opponent ;  and  when  we  consider  this  result,  and  when 
we  contemplate  the  influence  which  is  able  to  bring  to 
an  end  the  angry  contests  of  two  great  powers  by  a 
determination  the  justice  of  which  is  recognized  by 
both,  it  seems  as  if  the  learned  advocate  of  Britain  was 
right  when,  in  addressing  the  court,  he  declared  it  to 
be  the  greatest  tribunal  in  the  world. 

It  is  into  this  broad  field  that  the  profession  of 


482  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

diplomacy  has  extended  itself,  the  profession  in  which 
our  honored  guest  has  distinguished  himself,  not  only 
in  Washington,  but  in  London  and  Copenhagen  as 
well.  If  he  had  never  been  an  ambassador  at  all,  we 
should  have  known  him  and  appreciated  him  fully  as  a 
critic  and  a  writer  upon  English  literature,  and  a 
student  of  Shakespeare.  I  am  sure  that  we  wish  him 
many  years  of  activity  and  success,  and  I  think  you 
will  all  agree  with  me  that  in  his  hands  the  interna 
tional  relations  between  America  and  France  will  al 
ways  be  safe. 


CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 

(UNITED  STATES  SENATOR  PROM  NEW  YORK) 

AT  THE  DINNER  TO  JULES  J.  JUSSEEAND, 
DECEMBEE  2,  1910 

DURING  my  thirty-odd  years  of  membership  the  Lotos 
Club  has  welcomed  men  distinguished  in  every  de 
partment  of  human  endeavor.  The  broad  policy  of  our 
organization  is  to  recognize  merit  in  every  career.  The 
arts,  the  professions,  and  the  trades  are  all  welcomed  in 
the  person  of  a  distinguished  representative.  The  execu 
tive  branches  of  our  government,  National  and  State,  the 
Federal  and  State  judiciary,  the  Army  and  the  Navy, 
the  law,  medicine,  theology,  art,  literature,  the  drama, 
journalism  and  politics,  have  each  in  turn  been  the 
recipients  of  our  hospitality,  and  by  their  presence  en 
larged  the  vision  and  added  to  the  distinction  of  the 
club.  But  to-night  is  the  first  time  we  have  had  the 
opportunity  to  pay  tribute  to  a  personality  dual  in  its 
career  and  distinguished  in  each.  Ambassador  Jusse- 
rand  occupies  the  first  rank  as  a  diplomatist  and  stands 
among  the  foremost  in  the  field  of  literature.  He  was 
eminent  as  a  writer  before  he  became  distinguished  as 
a  diplomatist;  and  then  the  man  of  letters,  stirred  by 
the  success  of  the  diplomat,  strove  successfully  for 
higher  honors,  until  the  diplomat  in  turn  demanded  his 

483 


484  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

fair  opportunity.  Thus,  with  the  one  spurring  the 
other,  and  each  inhabiting  the  same  brain,  we  have  with 
us  to-night  a  diplomatist  unrivaled  in  his  successes  as  a 
representative  of  his  own  government  to  ours  at  Wash 
ington,  and  a  man  of  letters  who  speaks  better  English 
than  the  Englishman  and  writes  better  English  than 
the  American. 

The  tie  between  France  and  the  United  States  has 
always  been  full  of  sentiment.  Our  relations  with 
other  nations  from  the  beginning  have  been  based  upon 
interest  and  the  give  and  take  of  highly  organized  in 
dustrial  peoples  who  are  competitors  in  their  own 
markets  and  in  the  markets  of  the  world.  But  the  ar 
rival  upon  our  shores  of  Lafayette,  Rochambeau,  and 
De  Grasse  was  just  one  of  those  divine  inspirations  of 
the  best  of  human  nature  which  in  private  life  results 
in  the  broadest  charity,  the  tenderest  philanthropy,  and 
the  deepest  friendship,  and  in  international  relations  is 
a  fair  step  toward  the  peace  of  the  world  and  the 
brotherhood  of  man. 

Students  of  history,  and  especially  one  who  has  been 
intimately  associated  for  a  half-century  or  more  with 
public  life,  have  impressed  upon  them  how  events  move 
in  cycles.  The  marvel  of  to-day  may  be  repeated  a 
century  after.  As  in  the  Mendel  theory  of  the  trans 
mission  of  hereditary  traits,  the  strongest  ancestry  may 
not  be  found  in  the  second  generation,  but  is  likely  to 
appear  in  the  third,  and  certainly  in  the  fourth.  So 
with  nations.  Every  crisis  which  is  evolutionary  in  its 
nature  plants  the  seed  which  may  lie  dormant  for  a 
century  or  more,  but  is  certain  to  bear  abundant  fruit 
in  the  end.  When  Lafayette  came  to  the  United 


CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW  485 

States  there  were  many  things  he  might  have  brought 
General  Washington.  Washington  was  fond  of  fine 
clothes,  good  wines,  works  of  art,  and  books;  but  La 
fayette  brought  to  the  man  whom  he  loved  and  admired 
beyond  all  others  none  of  these.  He  gave  to  him  the 
key  to  the  Bastille.  He  knew  what  that  would  mean  to 
the  great  heart  of  the  Father  of  our  Country.  The  key 
to  the  Bastille  signified  for  that  day  the  overthrow  of 
the  old  order  of  arbitrary  and  autocratic  power.  It 
meant  the  recognition  and  admission  of  the  people  to  a 
share  in  their  own  government.  But  the  key  to  the 
Bastille  meant  also— and  that,  no  doubt,  in  his  pro 
found  faith  in  popular  sovereignty  was  foreshadowed 
by  the  prophetic  vision  of  Washington— that  a  seed 
planted  in  the  destruction  of  the  Bastille  would  bear 
fruit,  after  one  hundred  years,  in  a  republic  framed,  as 
far  as  French  conditions  would  admit,  upon  the  model 
of  the  United  States ;  a  republic  which  in  its  brief  life 
of  forty  years  has  demonstrated  its  vitality  and  ele 
ments  of  perpetuity  in  financial  crises  the  most  critical, 
in  diplomatic  difficulties  the  most  perilous,  and  only  the 
other  day  by  coming  safely  through  an  industrial  revo 
lution  which  aroused  the  apprehension  of  the  whole 
world. 

There  is  another  way  in  which  history  moves  in 
cycles.  Great  as  was  the  help  of  the  French  army  and 
navy,  greater  was  the  cash  and  credit  which  France 
loaned  to  us.  Our  cash  and  credit  were  both  exhausted, 
and  both  were  absolutely  essential  to  the  continuance  of 
the  Revolution  and  its  ultimate  triumph.  Both  came 
from  France,  and  now,  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
years  afterward,  we  had  a  financial  crisis  in  the  United 


486  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

States.  The  markets  of  London,  Frankfort,  and  Am 
sterdam  were  closed  to  us  because  every  country,  like 
ours,  was  expanding  beyond  its  own  resources  and  a 
borrower.  Only  the  financial  writer  of  the  future  can 
tell  how  much  we  are  indebted  for  our  present  stable 
business  condition,  for  the  efficiency  of  our  transporta 
tion  lines,  and  for  our  general  prosperity  to  the  hun 
dreds  of  millions  of  dollars  which  France  loaned  to  us 
in  1908  and  1909.  France,  with  the  largest  debt  ever 
known,  and  yet  with  the  most  generally  prosperous 
population;  France,  rising  from  the  ashes  of  the  war 
with  Germany,  the  overturning  of  dynasty,  and  the 
change  of  her  form  of  government,  is  to-day,  with  all 
the  burdens  which  come  from  these  mighty  cataclysms, 
by  reason  of  the  skill  and  the  thrift  of  its  people,  the 
banker  of  the  world. 

Libraries  have  been  filled  with  literature  about  diplo 
macy,  but,  as  Horace  said  about  a  poet,  a  diplomat 
is  born,  not  made.  Metternich  was  followed  by  every 
one  in  his  generation,  and  Metternich  taught  that  the 
secret  of  diplomacy  was  solely  in  successful  lying.  In 
that  day  the  highest  distinction  which  could  be  given  to 
an  aspiring  diplomat  was  to  elect  him  a  member  of  the 
Ananias  Club.  Talleyrand's  dictum  was  to  so  conceal 
one 's  meaning  by  the  use  of  words  that  if  the  interpre 
tation  did  not  turn  out  satisfactory,  he  could  deny  that 
that  was  what  he  meant.  Bismarck's  theory  was  that  as 
lying  and  diplomacy  were  synonymous,  if  he  told  the 
truth  he  could  carry  out  his  plans  to  successful  execu 
tion  before  the  other  party  had  grasped  that  he  meant 
what  he  said.  Now,  I  have  given  some  attention  to  diplo 
macy  and  have  an  idea  what  a  diplomat  should  be.  I 


CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW  487 

studied  it  up  when  President  Harrison  offered  me  the 
position  of  secretary  of  state,  as  that  officer  is  the  head 
of  the  whole  foreign  service.  I  studied  it  up  when  Presi 
dent  Johnson  sent  me  my  commission,  which  had  been 
confirmed  by  the  Senate,  as  minister  to  Japan,  which  I 
declined  after  a  month  or  more  of  examination.  I  studied 
it  up  when  I  was  offered  and  accepted  the  ambassador 
ship  to  England,  but  which,  because  of  a  good,  healthy 
lie  told  about  me,  did  not  materialize  in  the  end.  I 
studied  it  up  when  offered  the  mission  to  Berlin,  but 
found  my  German  too  rusty  to  make  the  place  happy 
for  myself.  The  modern  diplomat  adjusts  himself  to  the 
powers  that  be  in  the  capital  to  which  he  is  accredited. 
John  Hay  told  me  that  a  distinguished  ambassador 
closed  the  door  so  that  the  interview  might  be  private, 
then  read  to  him  the  official  communication  from  his 
own  government  on  the  matter  in  dispute,  and  then 
said,  ' '  So  much  for  that.  Now  listen  to  me.  So  and  so, 
which  is  directly  opposite  to  that  communication,  can  be 
brought  about,  only  both  you  and  I  must  be  in  a  posi 
tion,  if  it  fails,  to  deny  that  this  conversation  ever  took 
place. ' '  Our  friend,  Ambassador  Jusserand,  grasped  as 
did  none  of  his  contemporaries  the  fact  that  confidential 
relations  with  the  President  were  through  the  tennis 
cabinet.  Our  strenuous  President  loved  a  rough  rider 
to  accompany  him,  and  he  found  his  match  in  the  am 
bassador  from  France.  Roosevelt,  in  one  of  those  dar 
ing  rides,  plunged  with  his  horse  into  the  turbulent 
waters  of  the  Potomac,  and  as  he  reached  the  island  in 
the  stream  he  found  the  French  ambassador  beside 
him,  with  a  quotation  from  the  classics  which  fitted  the 
occasion. 


488  SPEECHES  AT  THE  LOTOS  CLUB 

The  students  of  our  universities  have  felt  the  inspira 
tion  of  Mr.  Jusserand's  literary  finish  and  genius  for 
saying  the  right  thing  in  the  right  place.  Social  Wash 
ington  hails  him  with  ever-increasing  delight.  The 
representative  of  one  of  the  Oriental  countries,  talking 
with  me  after  President  Taft  was  elected  and  before  he 
was  inaugurated,  and  during  the  time  he  was  having 
that  series  of  possum  dinners  in  Georgia,  made  many 
inquiries  about  him.  The  Oriental's  English  was  lim 
ited,  but  excellent  as  far  as  it  went.  I  said  to  him, 
"You  have  been  eminently  successful  with  President 
Roosevelt.  Now,  then,  as  a  preliminary  to  an  acquain 
tance  with  his  successor,  I  would  advise  you  to  learn  to 
love  possum. "  ' '  Oh ! "  said  the  Oriental,  ' '  I  have  had 
the  pleasure  of  meeting  Possum's  wife,  but  I  never 
knew  him."  Our  friend,  the  French  ambassador, 
neither  has  to  eat  possum  nor  play  possum.  With 
President  Taft's  alert  mind,  judicial  judgment,  and 
wide  experience  in  many  fields  of  government  activity, 
and  especially  in  diplomacy,  he  appreciates  the  value  of 
having  a  friendly  country  represented  by  such  an  am 
bassador  as  Mr.  Jusserand.  In  the  delicate  conditions 
arising  out  of  the  Payne  tariff  law,  I  have  no  hesitation 
in  saying  that  there  is  no  man  living  who  could  have 
performed,  and  can  continue  to  perform,  the  service 
for  French  industries  and  for  the  amicable  relations 
between  our  two  countries  which  has  been  done,  is 
being  done,  and  will  be  done  by  our  distinguished  guest 
of  to-night. 


DIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed, 
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SAprSOCQ 

^WK 


ftfiTB  LD  J«H5 

'   '-^   <'  ('     '•      : 


PR    3197004 


APR  14  19? 


T7Jun'54TFW 


LD  21-100m-ll,'49(B7146sl6)476 


RECEIVEO 


M 
70 


AY  29  1970 
-5PN  06 


R1S1913 


THE  UNlVKStTY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBEARV 


